416 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



flax not by telling farmers that we needed flax but by making it 

 profitable. 



As you pointed out, it took about 2 years where we did not get the 

 shift even though we were paying parity and an alleged comparable 

 price. We did not get the shift until we offered a monetary reward. 

 Then we got it without any hesitation. 



We have gotten that right along and frankly, I think that is the 

 way we should get these shifts. I think it is the way we will get the 

 shifts ancl the only way we will get the shifts. You have to do one of 

 two things : You "have to make it profitable and give a man a money 

 incentive to shift or you have to use the force of Government. I think 

 that holding out the monetary reward is the proper way of getting it. 



That is not, however, the way that it has been accomplished in those 

 countries that have resorted to complete control, Mr. Wyum. It never 

 has been clone. It did not work in this country when we tried to get 

 it just by voluntary action. 



In the north Panhandle and in your country, Mr. Hope, we wanted 

 grain sorghums grown during the latter part of the war. Did we 

 get anybody to shift out of wheat into grain sorghums ? We paid a 

 comparable price and put a parity support under it. No, we did not. 

 Wheat was more profitable than grain sorghums. The result was that 

 we lost 500,000 acres of grain sorghums in the Panhandle of Texas, 

 Mr. Patton, that shifted into wheat right at the time the county com- 

 mittees were all sitting down with those farmers, asking them to grow 

 more grain sorghums. They grew more wheat because it was more 

 profitable. 



At the time we wanted dry beans in California, they shifted prac- 

 tically all of their land in Kern County out of that crop and put it 

 into potatoes, which we did not want, although the county committees 

 were all telling them we were fixing goals, and that sort of thing. 



The only way you can stop that is to make it so profitable to the 

 farmer that he will shift, as we did in flax, or do what Britain has 

 done, where after this all-wise and all-powerful county committee de- 

 cided exactly what acres the farmer should plant ; if he does not plant 

 them they take his land away from him. 



Mr. Wtum. Let us not do it that way. 



Mr. PoAGE. That is the way they do it and it is the way they get 

 results in Great Britain. It works. You can either use the molasses 

 and draw the flies by paying the money, or you have to apply the 

 lash, and it seems to me you are reaching a point where the lash will 

 have to apply under this program. 



Mr. Talbott. I beg leave to submit that a complete concept of what 

 we here propose is quite the opposite of what you tell us is the situa- 

 tion in Great Britain. 



Mr. PoAGE. Did not the British when they started their system put 

 out the honey-coated words, that it was for the benefit of the farmers 

 and they were all going to get together and have these county com- 

 mittees ? 



They still have county committees over there. But once a county 

 committee speaks, it is the law of the Medes and the Persians that if 

 the farmer does not grow what the county committee says, they will 

 take his land away from him ancl he grows what the county committee 

 says and you will grow it, too. 



