288 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



The other method is to make the price of the other commocUt}^ at- 

 tractive enough for them to leave their present crops and go into the 

 other types of production. My proposal is the latter, that we make 

 the prices of the other commodity sufficiently attractive that people 

 will want to move into those enterprises rather than force them out of 

 their present enterprises by lowering the prices to what I think can be 

 levels which in the aggregate would lower the national farm income 

 below the point where it is in the interest of anybody to see it. 



Mr. Granger. Your first proposition of lowering the price would 

 have the tendency of pushing them over into the production of some 

 other crop. Has it been the experience of the past that when the 

 price goes down in a certain commodity instead of moving over, the 

 farmer tries to raise more in order to make more money? 



Secretary Brannan. You are exactly right, Mr. Granger, for the 

 other reason, that when the prices go down in a particular commodity 

 the farmer usually finds himself with inadequate funds to make the 

 kinds of adjustment that are necessary to get into another type of 

 production, namely the new types of machinery, or get the skills 

 and know-how together into the new business. 



Therefore, he just accentuates his efforts with his existing machinery 

 and with his existing knowledge and he attempts to make up by 

 volume what he is losing in price on his total income. 



I think that philosophy is fallacious from both po nts of view. 



Mr. Granger. I agree with you. 



In our American economy under the free enterprise system, certain 

 elements of our society have done rather remarkable things. Industry 

 has grown more or less independently and by its own efforts has become 

 strong. The laboring people, as a result of big business, started to 

 form big unions and through a century of bloody heads and lock-outs 

 and so forth they have finally got in a position where they can defend 

 .themselves. It seems that agriculture is the only one that has not 

 been able to do that. Why do we have to have a farm program? 

 Why does the Federal Government have to wet nurse the farm, as 

 you might call it? 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Granger, I really don't think the Federal 

 Government is giving a great deal more assistance to farm people 

 than it is to other segments of our population. You have referred, 

 by inference, and other members of the committee have referred, to 

 mine wage laws, unemployment compensation, the right to collective 

 bargaining of labor. They have referred to tariff laws, to the kinds 

 of laws which in effect assist some big industries to continue in business 

 because it is in the public interest. That came along over a period 

 of fifty to a hundred years. It was only in the last couple of decades 

 that we became very much concerned in this country in farm programs 

 and in attempting to give similar treatment by our Government to 

 farm people. 



Therefore, we have sort of bunched up our farm legislation so that 

 it looks like it is really more than the rest of our population is getting. 

 I believe it is not. 



I would like to refresh our memories by reminding you of the fact 

 that in the farm production and marketing picture is an element which 

 is not present in most of the other production and marketing problems 

 of most other kinds of'goods. That is that the farmer does not know 

 from the time he plants his crop until it is harvested what the price 



