510 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



Mr. WiNGATE. No, sir : and I have not seen very many of any other 

 kind. I have been in a lot of States of this Nation and I do not believe 

 that the Aiken bill represents the thinking of the farmers. 



Gentlemen, I want to tell you that if this Aiken bill is in effect in 

 ll>oO without controls on wheat or corn and no control on cotton this 

 year, the farmer is going to be asking who supported that bill. 



Tlie farmers will find out who supported that bill and why it is 

 there. 



Mr. Pace. And it is going to throw the economy of this Nation 

 into a tail spin? 



Mr. WiNGATE. That is right, and it will head us for a depression. 

 We can never survive a depression like we had following World War 1. 



With the basic commodities the Aiken bill has only wool and Irish 

 potatoes. I believe they would liave to be protected at 60 percent or 

 better. 



]Mr. Pace, Sixty to ninety percent? 



Mr. Windate. That is your eight commodities. 



Gentlemen, you discussed this this morning and I want to be brief 

 about it. 



It is terrible if yon are going to have controls on some commodities 

 and tlien leave it "to the discretion of the Secretary as to whether you 

 will get 1 percent of paritv or whether you will get 10 or whether you 

 will get 40 or 75. 



That is a bad situation, 



Mr. Hill. Mr, Chairman, may I ask a question? 



Mr, Pace, Mr. Hill has a question. 



Mr. Hill. You heard my question this morning regarding a floor. 

 Would tlie gentleman favor a floor for most basic agricultural prod- 

 ucts under which the Federal Government would not permit crops 

 to be sold on the market^ 



Mr. WiNGATE. Yes, sir. 



Mr. Hill. You would want that floor to be reasonable ? 



Mr. WiNGATE. That is right, sir, 



Mr, Hill, Then your flexibility could be above the cost of produc- 

 tion. 



Mr. WiNGATE. That is right, 



Mr, Hill, Is that not a fair proposition to start off with? 



Mr, WiNGATE, Congressman, you were not here a moment ago when 

 I mentioned the surpluses which we carry. Remember, parity is a 

 fair exchange. If we accept 90 percent you know somebody else is 

 getting that 10 percent. 



Gentlemen, you are agreeing to back off and take that price. With 

 the surpluses we have to carry I feel that this guarantee should not be 

 less than 90 percent. I want to mention one or two things just to show 

 you how ridiculous this looks to me. 



We will take bread, for example. According to the official figures 

 of a few months ago, bread was selling for 16 cents a loaf. Had the 

 farmer made the first man liis present of his wheat and said, 'T don't 

 want anything for it'" and had every bushel been delivered that way, 

 the consumer would still be paying 14,7 cents for that loaf of bread. 



Let us take a shirt, a $3. CO shirt, as another example. 



If the farmer just gave his cotton awav, that shirt Avould still cost 

 83.25. 



