GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 589 



there will also be a difficulty in determining the wheat allotment. The 

 farm may have been split in two or doubled. That is no new prob- 

 lem and will not be in the administration of the quota law. It 

 presents no more difficulty under Public Law 12 than it does under the 

 quota law. 



Mr. Smith. I am quite sure that in the end PMA will do its best 

 to carry ou the law, but in my conversations with some of their officers, 

 they seemed to me overimpressed with the headaches involved. I did 

 not know they had gotten as far into preparing for tliat as you have 

 indicated. 



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



Mr. Pace. Yes. 



Mr. Hill. I noticed you very nicely passed over these States that 

 have increased so tremendously in the past few years. What do you 

 propose to do to a State like my own that has increased its wheat 

 acreage since 1942 approximately 206 percent, or a State like Michi- 

 gan, which has increased theirs 225 percent ? Mississippi has increased 

 its wheat acreage 150 percent. I have every one of those percentages 

 on my desk. I think you have 10 States that you have gone over that 

 have increased their acreage since 1942 and have gone up sharply. 

 The State of Missouri is one of them. Why the State of Missouri 

 should increase its wheat acreage is a question. Someone will say they 

 are not a wheat State. They are a wheat State if you count this mar- 

 ginal land. What are you going to do to us in Cfolorado ? 



Mr. Smith. Mr. Hill, I personally am not going to do anything 

 to Colorado. 



Mr. Hill. What are you going to recommend, to cut our throats? 



Mr. Pace. He has not sought to make any recommendation with 

 regard to State wheat allotments. 



Mr. Smith. No, that is wholly contingent on what kind of farm 

 program you have and what kind of cuts have to be made. I am 

 speaking solely to the point of the farmers who did shift out of wheat 

 into, we will say, flax, at the request of the Government during the 

 war. 



Mr. Hill. Is the farmer who shifted out of a hundred acres of wheat 

 into a thousand acres of wheat because the Government needed wheat 

 during the war not in exactly the same position ? 



Mr. Smith. I am not sure that he is, but I would not attempt to 

 debate the point. 



Mr. Hill. I noticed a little recommendation in an agricultural re- 

 port sheet that some cotton group had recommended that they cut 

 not more than 5 percent off the total acreage of any State in any one 

 year and not more than 15 off any States that have increased at a rapid 

 rate like Colorado and Michigan or Missouri or Mississippi. How 

 would you look at a proposition like that ? 



Mr. Smith. Mr. Hill, I am not prepared at this point to get into 

 an argument between Mr. White and Mr. Abernethy, if he were here, 

 as to whether new cotton States deserve more or old cotton States de- 

 serve less. I do not know. I would have to consider that very care- 

 fully. 



Mr. Hill. If a certain provision would be fair for cotton, I am not 

 sure it would not be fair for wheat. 



Mr. Smith. If you are referring to those figures you used, I am 

 not sure I know. 



