GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 413 



stock than growing grain and you ought to import your grain from 

 Canada and the United States and grow your hvestock at home." 



They said, "The Under Secretary of Agriculture is here. Maybe we 

 can get her opinion on this." 



So they called the Under Secretary, who turned out to be a lady 

 physician who had practiced medicine all her life and who did not 

 know anything more about farming than I know about coal mining. 

 I say that in all kindness. They related the situation to her and she 

 said, ''We are utilizing our land to the best advantage." 



I said, "That is the whole question." That was where the differ- 

 ence of opinion arose, I thought. "It occurred to me that you were 

 not utilizing the land to the best advantage." 



She said, "There is no question about it. In every county in Eng- 

 land we have a county agricultural committee that prescribes exactly 

 what the farmer can grow on his land and tells the farmer just ex- 

 actly how much stock he must have and exactly how many acres he 

 shall put into grain and they know better about that than anj'body 

 else. 



"There is no question about it. It is settled and final and com- 

 plete." 



And if you are willing to turn the control of your farm and every 

 other farm in the United States over to either a county committee or 

 the Department of Agriculture or a czar or anybody else who has the 

 power to say definite^ and finally that they know more about this than 

 anybody else and they are the final and absolute judges and you may 

 grow six hens and no more, and if one of them dies they will throw 

 you in jail and if you happen to have an extra egg, in jail you go, then 

 you can accomplish these controls. 



But for my part, I had rather go on eating turnip greens and corn- 

 bread and growing my own turnips and planting them at the time of 

 the moon I like than to depend on somebody else to read off an act 

 for me. 



I do not like that kind of complete control. That gives you effi- 

 ciency. There is no question about it, Mr. Talbott. 



The Chairmax. Mr. Wyum has a remark to make. 



Mr. Wyu3I. All during the war I sat on the State agricultural ad- 

 visory counsel in our State. In those days they had used this matter 

 of setting up production goals. We passed from the old scarcity 

 period in our agriculture and found out that we had to raise an abun- 

 dance. This is how it was done. The people who have the statistics 

 and know what our needs are, figured out how much we needed of 

 wheat and corn and cotton and all the other things. 



Then on the basis of what the normal production had been in all 

 the other States they transmitted that information down to the various 

 State councils and they said "This is what you used to raise. Can you 

 people help us in getting the production that we need from your 

 State?" 



Then we as a council batted that back and forth and figured out 

 where we could raise more of this and that in order to bring that about. 

 We suggested that these people, probably due to the method of farm- 

 ing, the kind of soil they had, could probably raise more of this thing 

 or that thing. That information was relayed to the county com- 

 mittees. 



