418 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



I am sure, if there is a concept of the grass roots that Mr. Wyum 

 points out and the conviction that we should keep a close eye on 

 what happens in this town and in every State legislature, that we can 

 use the devices of government. We will make some mistakes and may 

 go too far in various instances, but as long as a basic faith and a basic 

 integrity on the part of the people resides with the people, we are not 

 in any danger of a Hitlerian sort of thing. 



We have gone through two World Wars and we have vested in the 

 military — in whom I personally do not happen to have too much con- 

 fidence, but that is neither here nor there— great powers, and of neces- 

 sity. I was for vesting them in that time. We vested in the Presi- 

 dency and administrative officers great powers. Possibly we will not 

 regain all of those powers that we vested. But at least we have enough 

 objections and minorities to come out. 



The only reason I am making this statement is because I think that 

 we can do these things in an American way, Mr. Congressman, that 

 we can use the elements of government. We started with the Farm 

 Board. The farm organizations, along with some of the men in this 

 committee have fought for 25 years. I do not see any alternative, if 

 we are going to use the instruments of Government, to the public 

 having some protection through the Government in itself. 



Mr. Pace, If there is no serious objection, I want to move off from 

 the unit plan and get into the other features. Do you have any ques- 

 tions about the unit plan, Mr. Albert ? 

 Mr. Albert. No. 

 Mr. Hope. I have one question. 



Mr. Pace. Will you wait a minute, Mr. Albert, and clear up Mr. 

 Hope's question? 



Mr. Hope. The question I wanted to ask was this : Secretary Bran- 

 nan, when he was before the committee, stated that he did not be- 

 lieve the unit plan should be made applicable to those commodities 

 upon which marketing quotas were in effect. I would like to have 

 your comment on that. 



Mr. Talbott. Mr. Hope, I did not hear the statement. I was busy 

 on this work and could not attend the hearings, but got the benefit 

 of the discussion. 



My own reaction is that you would completely cripple the unit plan 

 if you excluded any of the commodities. It seems to me that to give 

 the multiple flexibility in terms of the choices that a farmer can have 

 in an effort to adjust production, we need to have the unit value 

 weighted to the farm commodities so that you have an equal break on 

 all of them. 



As I stated this morning, I am not sure that it does. I should like 

 to see it brought up to date and some other factors added, particularly 

 the factor of labor cost and reweighting or at least a review of the 

 weighting of the cost factors, and indexes in the parity formula, but 

 assuming that the parity formula does have a reasonably proper rela- 

 tionship to prices of commodities, then the conversion into the mul- 

 tiple-unit system would give a man producing a thousand units or 

 5,000 units of any one of the commodities exactly the same dollar 

 income that ])roducing a thousand or 5,000 units of any other com- 

 modity would bring. 



If you will follow the table you will note that that works out to be 

 exactly accurate, and if there should be changes as a result of a recast- 



