228 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



who is going to be? Somebody is going to scale me down in accordance 

 with the best judgment. 



Mr. Hope. Here is another question that has disturbed me some- 

 what, and that is we have gone on the assumption which I think the 

 pubhc has accepted that parity prices are fair prices to the consumer, 

 and if we come in now with the idea that the consumer should be able 

 to procure agricultural products at less than parity price, isn't that 

 going to have the effect of weakening the very belief that we have had 

 in this country that parity price to the farmer is a fair price to the con- 

 sumer and to the farmer? In other words, you talked about 15-per- 

 cent milk the other day, and you talked something about $1 potatoes, 

 but if we should go in the direction of lowering the price to the con- 

 sumer at less than what we have been saying is a fair price both to the 

 farmer and the consumer, we will be weakening, it seems to me, the 

 feeling that parity prices were fair. 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Hope, we may be. I think we have the 

 choice between that kind, you might say, of accusation and the 

 accusation that we are maintaining the price at unreasonably high 

 levels by withdrawing commodities from the market. 



I just feel myself that the American public is not going to stand 

 indefinitely for maintaining the prices at any artificial level by with- 

 drawing commodities from the market and destroying them or dis- 

 posing of them by some unsound method. Essentially, you can see 

 that is what we are confronted with here today, and that is pointed 

 up by the fact that when we went into the price support program, 

 we did it on the basis of maintaining prices, but we have not lost 

 much money because we could find a sale for something almost 

 anywhere. We could sell it to the Army or we could sell it to the 

 interim countries, or we could sell to EGA, but that time is fast 

 coming to a close, and we do not know that we are going to be able 

 to sell everything today, and with one possible exception I do not 

 know where we could get rid of any appreciable amount of a billion 

 pounds of pork, if we came up with that much, and the only economical 

 thing would be to let it go into the market and let somebody have the 

 use of it, rather than to have to dump it some place as we did with 

 potatoes. 



Mr. Hope. Just to make this thing very simple, it seems to me 

 there are two different courses that could be followed here: One 

 would be to go in the direction of lower prices to the consumer, to 

 complete that goal, in which case you would, instead of restricting 

 production you would expand production to bring about a larger 

 supply on the market, which would lower prices to the consumer, and 

 in that case, of course, you would not try to control what the farmer 

 produced, just to take an extreme case, but you would have an 

 enormous amount of money coming out of the Federal Treasury to 

 take care of the situation. 



Now, the opposite course would be to take over control of all 

 commodities on which you are going to support the price, carefully 

 estimate what the consumption would be at the support level, and in 

 that case if everything worked out according to the theory suggested, 

 you would not have a large amount to pay out, but farm production 

 would be rigidly controlled. 



Which one of the courses would you contemplate following, or 

 trying to follow under your plan? 



