GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 1023 



Bureau show that the 1948-49 harvest will produce only 17K million 

 pounds of tung oil. 



Recent developments in China certainly bear out the contention of 

 the domestic tung industry that Chinese supplies of tung oil may be 

 cut off for several years by the Communists. Wliere then will this 

 country obtain its supplies of tung oil if war breaks out and the 

 American tung orchards are permitted to go to weeds for lack of an 

 adequate price? 



Few war materials played as important a role in World War II as 

 tung oil. It was used in more than 800 manufacturing lines. It is 

 used as a drying agent in printing inks, high grade paints, varnishes, 

 and lacquers, as a coating for the interior of food cans, in the manu- 

 facture of linoleum and as brake linings, and as a waterproofing for 

 raincoats, tarpaulins, plywood, the underbodies of flying boats, and 

 as a protective covering for bullets, guns, tanks, radar and enclosed 

 parts of bombs. There is no substitute for tung oil in its field. It is 

 much too valuable a material for the domestic source of supply to be 

 destroyed either through ignorance, lack of interest or deliberate 

 actions of certain Government officials whose chief interest seems to 

 be to encourage and protect foreign sources of supply even though in 

 so doing they endanger an American industry. 



Gentlemen, I thank you. 



Mr. PoAGE (presiding). Will you submit to some questions, Mr. 

 Rowlands? 



Mr. Rowlands. Yes, sir. 



Mr. PoAGE. Mr. Andresen is recognized. 



Mr. Andresen. I notice that you put the blame more on the 

 industry than you do on the Government with reference to the 

 situation confronting the domestic producer of tung oil. 



Mr. Rowlands. .No, not quite. Of course, I consulted the Govern- 

 ment very thoroughly. I went to see Mr. Klein. These nuts had 

 been sent out and we were trying to find a method to supplant the 

 pine trees, after the7 had been cut off. My partner and I started an 

 experimental farm down there and I think we spent some $300,000 

 trying out beeches, pecans, pears, that sort of thing. But the ywere all 

 luxury or semiluxury and something that a farmer could not attend to. 



Mr. Andresen. I am for your industrv. I have observed it during 

 the past 25 years. I know what you have done and I think it is a 

 fine thing. I think you should have protection. But you have 

 indicated now that the manufacturers of paint and varnish are not 

 as much interested as they were before. 



Mr. Rowlands. No, because there is a foreign supply coming in 

 and it is being dumped here. We have gone to the Department of 

 Commerce — 1 have not gone myself, particularly, but others of our 

 members have and pleaded with them to find a way to stop this dump- 

 ing. We think the Chinese oil ought to come in here, because we have 

 use for about 140,000,000 pounds a year and we supply ferhaps two- 

 fifths of that demand. We think the Chinese oil ought to come in, 

 but in an orderly way so that it would benefit the Chinese much more 

 and benefit us, too. A great deal of this Chinese oil comes in in order 

 for the shipper over there to get gold dollars. I heard it said some 

 time ago that there was over $600,000,000 in Chinese money in the 

 United States in stocks, bonds and securities, that they were not 

 using, that they were not sending back to China. 



91215 — 49 — ser. u, pt. 5 18 



