GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 507 



in the Aiken bill that when they vote against quotas their support shall 

 be 50 percent of parity and whenever supports are in effect the whole 

 control machinery becomes operative. 



Mr. WiNGATE. That is right, 



Mr. Pace. Under the Aiken bill, there is nothing in the world a 

 fanner can do to get out from under controls. Is that your under- 

 standing i 



Mr. WixGATE. That is right. 



Mr. Pace. That is the law ? 



Mr. AVixgate. With reference to the Aiken bill, the 60 to 90 per- 

 cent sliding scale, gentlemen, the real thinking behind this — and it 

 has been a struggle in ouir organization for 3 years — is that if the price 

 gets down to 60 percent it will force them out. I agree with you that 

 is one way to control, if you will bankrupt a fellow and get him out 

 of the way. 



You can control that way. I am opposed to that kind of control. 

 In the Aiken bill they set 75 percent guaranty when supplies are 

 normal or less. Xinety percent could not cost the Government any- 

 thing because the supply is normal. 



Mr. Pace. It is 90 percent at TO percent of normal under the 

 schedule ? 



Mr. WixGATE. But if we forget the schedule and say when the sup- 

 ply is normal or less, if you get 90 percent guaranteed you are merely 

 preventing the speculators during the unloading season from taking 

 the farmer's price down to 75 percent. That is where they would 

 take it. It would not help the consuming public at all. It would dis- 

 rupt your economy. If joi\ let such a program as that go into effect, 

 you can go to a banker who is financing a man growing cotton and 

 see how much he will lend you. 



He will have the 75 percent in mind when he lends to you. If you 

 drop that to 60 he will haA^e 60 in mind. And, gentlemen, if you drop 

 it to 40, he will have 40 in mind. 



Mr. Pace, 3Iay I interrupt you there ? 



Mr. WixGATE. Yes, sir. 



Mr. Pace. Is it not true that when the support price is from 60 to 

 90, depending upon the supply, and the price is not fixed until harvest 

 time, all in the world that the farmer can borrow on is a 60 percent of 

 parity basis ? That is all the bank can afford to lend him on ? 



Mr. WiNGATE. That is the thing the banker would have in mind. 



Another bad thing about this bill is that you do not set the price 

 and the farmer does not know what the price is until the time when 

 he starts to harvest his crop. How in the world can he operate under 

 any such set-up as that? I think that is simply ridiculous. 



Another thing about this bill that I do not like is when you go into 

 controls — using cotton as an example again — and you have a bumper 

 crop, as some of you have suggested we might have, and we are way 

 above normal, you are going to cut the farmer's acreage, we will sup- 

 pose, 20 percent and you will cut his price, too. 



Yon might just as well draw a knife across his throat. Yon are just 

 putting him out of business. It does not sound fair to Tlie farmers 

 or to me. 



Mr, CooLEY, You mean you might as well cut their throats as to 

 put the Aiken bill into effect ? 



Mr, WixGATE. I agi'ee with vou on that. 



