GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 609 



Mr. PoAGE (interposing). It is true, that they are going to put in 

 more acres where people largely depend upon one crop, is it not? 



Mr. DA^^[s. Yes. 



Mr. PoAGE, And unfortunately a large part of American agriculture 

 is more or less one crop, or very closely approaches a one-crop system, 

 and consequently it seems to me that when you adopt the philosophy 

 of the Aiken bill that you have adopted a philosophy of trying to 

 control production by starving farmers out. If you can completely 

 starve the farmer out, and send him into the mines, not into Siberia, 

 but into the mines or into the mills of the United States then you will 

 have achieved the kind of adjustment in production that you want, 

 and that is the only kind of adjustment that is provided in the Aiken 

 bill, is it not i 



Mr. Davis. Well, I am not sure you will get the desired adjustment 

 in the case of potatoes or wheat even through liquidation. Someone 

 else may take over the same land and continue to produce the same 

 crop. 



Mr. PoAGE (interposing). Instead of using that method, and I am 

 talking now about the policy in the Aiken bill, you have endorsed a 

 bill, and you are suggesting by such endorsement that we proceed 

 on the basis of a philosophy of destroying the farmer in order to get 

 rid of any production that is unnecessary — in other words to get rid 

 of the rats, you would burn down the house — and you are destroying 

 the farmer along with it, and to my mind such a suggestion is not 

 even followed in the philosophy adopted by Russia, and I do not know 

 of any nation in this world that has followed a philosophy that is in 

 the Aiken bill, and as I understand that is what you are suggesting, 

 that if we produce too much, in order to get rid of the unneeded 

 production, we cut the price to 60 percent of parity, and you and I 

 know that will break every cotton farmer in America, and every wheat 

 farmer, so that the Aiken bill does not decrease but increase production. 



Mr. Davis. I do not think it is intended to be as harsh as that. I 

 think a lot depends upon how it would be administered. 



Mr. PoAGE. In other words, you follow a philosophy of rehdng on 

 the administration, and your only hope is being able to get some relief 

 by having the Administrator overlook some provision in the law ; and 

 certainly we do not want to have a Government of that kind. If so it 

 w^ould be better to close Congress up and let the executive branch of 

 the Government run things, if that is the philosoph}' to be followed. 



Mr. Da\t:s. Frankly I am not sure whether the step down formula 

 of the Aiken bill is what we need ; I am not sure it is exactly in gear 

 with what we need. The thing that I do believe is important is that 

 we keep our program flexible enough so that we can continue to adjust 

 to changing conditions, such as 



Mr. PoAGE (interposing). The Aiken bill is flexible in one direc- 

 tion, but the result is lower and lower prices until you get prices down 

 to where the farmer would be put out of business. 



I think there must be something in the Secretary's proposal — and 

 while there are things in it that I cannot accept — but it must be recog- 

 nized that he does have a proposal that tends to higher and higher 

 farm prices over the years, whereas the Aiken bill tends to lower and 

 lower prices. 



Mr. Davis. I think it is a question of what use Avill be made of it, 

 and unless we get into some emergencv like the war 



