GENERAL FARM PROGRAJVI 637 



Mr. Hope. You would have to use acreage as the basis for figuring 

 your bushels to start with, would you not? 



Mr. AIcKiNNis. That is right. It would take some mechanics. 



Mr. Pace. I do not think so. Let me say that it would not hurt 

 you gentlemen if you got in touch with Mr. MacDonald, the com- 

 missioner of agriculture of Texas, and talked with him, because he has 

 insisted on a similar plan for cotton for the last 10 or 15 years. He has 

 thought of every possible objection. He was up here just recently 

 and we had a conference with him just like we are having now. 



It is contemplated, as I recall, that in the case of cotton you would 

 issue to each cotton grower a certificate for so many bales of cotton. 

 You would say to the farmer, "You can produce 15 bales of cotton for 

 the domestic market." 



Mr. McKiNNis. That is practically the same thing. 



Mr. Pace. Not in acres, but in cotton. Then I think he has a plan 

 where you can take that certificate to the bank and cash it. "I'Mien the 

 cotton mill buj^s cotton it must have acquired one of those certificates 

 and sm-rendered it when it gets a bale of cotton and pays the domestic 

 price for it. 



Mr. McKiNNis. There is the point in wheat, and I agree that it has 

 to be in commodity, not in acres. I feel that way about wheat. 



But with wheat, j^ou could either subsidize, if you had to, or you 

 could use a certificate plan. You could take your certificate and go to 

 the bank and draw whatever is the difference, mora of a parity deal, 

 or else a certificate plan would be fine. 



When you subsidize, of com'se, that is not self-supporting. 



Mr. Pace. This is not a subsidy. All the cotton moves at one 

 price, at the world price. He goes to the bank and draws the dif- 

 ference between what he gets for his cotton and the support level. 

 Then it works out where the mills pay that difference and reimburse 

 the bank thi'ough a very complicated system. But you do realize 

 that there will also have to be set up a system where the flour mill can 

 be reimbursed for that part of the wheat it bought to export for 

 flour because the flour miller would get a rebate on that. If he 

 bought 1,000,000 bushels of wheat for food purposes and then exported 

 it in the form of flour, he would get a rebate. He would have to, 

 you see. That would move at the world price. 



The second thing you have to do is strengthen your laws against 

 the reimport of any wheat into the United States that you sold at 

 the world price. If you did not, a buyer could buy wheat at the 

 world price and turn around and reimport it into the United States, 

 enteriag into the competitive market and making your program 

 very expensive. 



I am thi-owing that out, because of all of those things and probably 

 100 others Mr. MacDonald thinks he has overcome. The cotton 

 growers do not tliink he has, and they never have embraced his plan. 

 I would not be at all averse to seeing it tried on wheat. 



Mr. White. It would be even more difficult, would it not, Mr. 

 Chairman, on account of the feed market? 



Mr. Pace. I think it would make a good guinea pig and I would 

 like to see it worked out. 



Mr. Hope. I think the problems are essentially the same in cotton 

 and wheat. There might be a few differences in detail. 



.91215 — 49 — ser. s, pt. 4 2 



