524 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



fully in the past has been largely because we have been looking for 

 some single magic legislative cure-all that would meet the problems 

 of cotton and milk, oranges and wheat, hogs and tobacco. We backed 

 the equalization fee, the export debenture, the domestic allotment pro- 

 gram, the ever normal granary, and, more recently, price supports, 

 acreage and marketing allotments, claiming for each the magic powers 

 of curing all the ills to which a hundred varieties of commodities 

 are subject. All this time each of us has been measuring the worth 

 of the program chiefly by its effect on the commodity with which we 

 wei'e most familiar. 



There is no such cure-all. There are almost as many problems 

 as there are commodities. The problem changes from year to year, 

 and the whole picture is frequently compliated by geographical dif- 

 ferences. At the outset we feel it might be helpful to summarize 

 our approach by saying that we advocate a number of different devices 

 for meeting the wide range of conditions whicli exist, trusting to 

 administrative discretion to apply the remedy best fitted to cure 

 the disease. We would not try to cure appendicitis with castor oil 

 nor smallpox with surgery, but we would try to supply a practical 

 and substantial stock of remedies, to be used as best needed. Such 

 a program involves both the type of available remedies and assur- 

 ance of their being used with discretion. We propose a commission 

 or advisory board to safeguard the administration, operating within 

 the framework of the act, with power to use the remedies to attain 

 certain goals all of which we will discuss in detail. 



We propose handling as much of the problem as possible through 

 the ordinary channels of trade with certain aids designed to enhance 

 the effectiveness of these efforts. We recognize the possible necessity 

 of limited controls, but our general plan is to give every possible 

 aid to individual initiative and determination, relying on Govern- 

 ment control and subsidies only to the extent necessary as a sort of 

 last line of defense not too frequently used. 



We believe the greatest danger of failure lies in repeating our 

 mistakes of the past in which different groups, with different back- 

 grounds of geography and production, each have fought for their 

 own particular progi-am, without recognizing the need to meet a 

 tremendously diversified problem. On the othei- hand, it would 

 be a mistake to encumber a bill with extraneous matters not directly 

 involved with the problem we are trying to meet. 



There seems no need to take the time of the committee to point 

 out the need for maintaining a substantial farm income if we are 

 to have stable prosperity, for almost everyone now recognizes this 

 as a necessity. We heartily approve of the first dozen pages of Sec- 

 retary Brannan's testimony on this point given before this committee 

 on April 7. We would only emphasize the validity of what he said 

 by pointing out that farmers are operating the greatest manufac- 

 turing industry in America with a larger investment than all other 

 manufacturing industries combined, and with a constant expenditure 

 for labor, machinery, building, and raw materials limited only by 

 their gross income. We also believe additional emphasis might be 

 placed on the social and economic value of maintaining the pros- 

 perity of the family-size farm, with its tremendous contributions to 

 our industrial centers in the form of a continual flow of young men 



