GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 471 



Mr. Hope. It is a fact, is it not, that the Agricultural Act of 1948 

 was based upon the recommendation of your organization and other 

 farm organizations and upon the testimony of tlie tlien Secretary 

 of Agriculture and other officials of the Department of Agriculture ? 



Mr. Kline. It was based on recommendations of our present Secre- 

 tary and his predecessor, and we worked consistently with the Depart- 

 ment all through the development of the legislation, as you know. 



Ml-. Hill. That answered my question. To close out that part of 

 my first question, I would say that I certainly hope the farm pro- 

 gram can be worked out on a bipartisan basis. But to read what 

 you say on page 7 one would naturally infer that you were referring 

 mostly to the flexible price supports in regard to your bipartisan 

 approach. 



The second question is on page IH. ]Mr. Chairman, I am sticking 

 right to the script. 



Mr. Pace. I realize that. 



Mr. Hill. On page 6 at No. 5, we read : 



We view auy unit limitation as a dangerous precedent and opening wedge 

 which eventually would result in Government supervised and stabilized agricul- 

 tural poverty. 



That is a terrific statement and has been missed even by most of 

 our newspaper reporters. In fact. I have never read that anybody 

 said you ever said that, but there it is. "We view any unit limitation." 

 I suppose you are talking about that 1,800-farin unit. It might as 

 well have been 2,400. "We view any unit limitation as a dangerous 

 precedent and opening wedge which eventually would result in Gov- 

 ernment supervised and stabilized agricultural poverty.'' Just tell 

 us what you are talking about. I need information on that. 



Mr. Klixe. I agree with you that it is not the place at which this 

 unit limitation comes in, but it is the principle involved which is 

 important. It has in it the idea that the Government is going to 

 distribute the right to produce and that it is going to do it effectively. 

 It will be inevitably true, I think, that the more uneconomic — and I 

 simply mean there the greater the difference between the administered 

 price and what a price would be if it were a free price — the more 

 pressure there will be on the Government to distribute the right to 

 produce on a per capita basis. 



The difficulty with the proposition, which has some merit in the 

 distribution of the good things in society, is that it begins immediately 

 to squeeze the economic producers down and to bring in more and 

 more the less efficient producers with the assumption that thereby 

 society gets rich. I think the assumption is a false assumption. 



There is also the assumption that as we go further in the direction 

 of our social aims we also end up with somewhat less production 

 and somewhat less of the capacity of society to solve its problems 

 in the end. 



May I say it this way : The productive capacity of America is the 

 marvel of the world. On the economic end everything is encouraged 

 which will create genius and the rewards of individuals and the right 

 to earn rewards by extraordinary application, unusual ability, or 

 whatever means are at the command of the individual if he applies 

 himself. He can get unusual rewards. That has obtained for us 

 extraordinary production. 



