GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 487 



Mr. CooLET. Did you approve the tobacco-quota provisions and the 

 support price for tobacco in the Aiken bill or did you disapprove them ? 



Mr. Klike. We supported the bill with those provisions. 



Mr. CooLET. If the tobacco program is good as it is written into 

 the Aiken bill, and you say that you think it is because you supported 

 it, then why is not a similar program good for cotton and peanuts 

 and wheat ? 



Mr. Kline. Mr. Cooley. one of the difficulties is that you want a 

 short, sweet answer to that proposition, yet you ask a question that 

 covers four major commodities and hundreds of millions of acres. 



Mr. CooLET. It covers one theory and that is all. 



Mr. Kline. But I ask you not to forget that tobacco was grown last 

 year on about 1.6 million acres, that it was sold to very few major 

 buyers, that if it was sold to somebody else it sold for a minor use at a 

 low price. That is quite different than is the case with many other 

 cro|)s. 



Mr. Coolet. May I ask you a question ? 



Mr. Kline. Surel}^ 



Mr. Cooley. What has all that to do with the theory of the law? 

 One is that you are going to tell a farmer before he plants what his 

 price will be if he complies with the acreage allotments, and marketing 

 quotas. You are dealing now with tobacco at 90 percent, strict mar- 

 keting quotas and acreage allotments. 



That is one program. You take all the others and surround them 

 with doubt and uncertainty. I just want to know how you can ride 

 two horses going in opposite directions and embrace two theories 

 which are entirely at variance with each other. 



If you support the statement that you have presented to this com- 

 mittee, I do not see how you could support the tobacco program. 



Mr. Kline. We did support the tobacco program in the statement 

 presented to this committee. 



Mr. CooLET. That is right, and you supported that because you knew 

 tliat you could not as a farm leader and a farm organization go on 

 recoi'd in opposition to it because it is the best program of aiij that 

 we have ever had. 



Mr. Kline. We stated in our printed statement which you have at 

 hand the reasons by virtue of which tobacco as a commodity differs 

 from a lot of other commodities. 



The asssumption that because you can do a thing with one commodity 

 3^ou can do it with all commodities seems to me to be an assumption 

 that you may make if you wish, but I do not care to be guilty of it. 



Mr. Cooley. Have we not been successful with cotton over the years ? 

 We have not lost any money on the cotton program. We have made 

 money for the Government, a quarter of a billion dollars. 



Why would you change a program which has worked very well for 

 one of the major agricultural commodities of this country? 



Mr. Kline. We are changing it only in the suggestions which we 

 have made and if you eliminate tlie wartime experience vre are chang- 

 ing it only to make it more possible for the cotton people to do what 

 they wish to do with regard to making their 00-percent loan more 

 effective, making their local program more effective, and more effec- 

 tively adjusting our production to demand. 



Mr. CooLEY. Was that sponsored by any of the cotton people in your 

 organization? 



