GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 1073 



(The list is as follows:) 



Mrs. Polly Moore Morrison, Gralyn Hotel, Washington, D. C, 



J. Riley Rankin, Poplarville, Miss. 



L. O. Crosby, Jr., Picayune, Miss. 



J. Kenton Chapman, Columbia, INIiss., and Washington, D. C. 



S. Tonner, New York. 



A. L. Stica, Picayune, Miss. 



Tom Crawford, Bogalusa, La. 



Statement by Mr. George Hixon, Wichita, Kans. 



Gentlemen, my name is George Hixon, and right in here I must ask you a 

 question. Would you like to have a fine big income-tax reduction? Well, just 

 get yourself a tung orchard, where the net losses for the last 3 years on my mature 

 200-acre tung orchard in Washington Parish, La. have caused deductions totaling 

 $3,225.65 on my Federal income-tax report. That experience is typical of what 

 has been happening to all of in the five-State Tung Belt. The American tung 

 oil industry is now dying of discrimination and neglect. There are two main 

 causes for its plight. First, since 194G the indifi'erence of officialdom has helped 

 the Chinese, desperate from 12 years of war and inflation for American dollars, 

 to dump between four and six times as much cheaply produced Chinese tung oil 

 into this country as our young American orchards could produce. Second, our 

 cultivating, harvesting, and milling costs have risen drastically. The result is that 

 we are cruelly ground between the milllstone of low prices, due to the dumped 

 Chinese product, and high American production costs. Because of this whipsaw- 

 ing our American orchards which produce between one-fifth and one-eighth of our 

 country's normal peacetime demand for tung oil are being neglected and are 

 becoming less productive simply because their owners cannot aflord to pay for the 

 work to cultivate and harvest them, and this calamity of our fast -approaching 

 ruin exists here now. 



Despice the discover}- at Bikini that tuTig-oil coatings may be tlie only i)ractical 

 protective coatings on ships and war equipment that would shield off gamma 

 rays, and despite the fact that the Armj^ and Navy found it necessary in this last 

 war to commandeer the entire output of American timg oil for use in varnishes, 

 in lacquers and for insulating materials in electrical equipment, our present 

 predicament exists despite a normal peacetime demand at least five times greater 

 than the home grown supply, and despite the fact that if war comes again America 

 will again need man,v times the present production of the neglected and weakened 

 American tung oil orchards and mills, but won't be able to get them from our 

 importers or from Chinese speculators in their far isolated country; and finally, 

 our impoverishment exists despite the immediate threat of the Chinese Commim- 

 ists to use their country's most valuable export as a weapon to spread imrest here 

 here by finishing off the ruin of our American producers with the ftirther and 

 larger flood of yet cheaper tung oil. Here in America there are over 5,000 com- 

 mercial tung orchards and 14 tung nut crushing mills scattered from Texas through 

 Florida within about 100 miles of the Gulf coast and 10 years ago when tung oil 

 also sold for slightly higher then its present price of 17^^ cents per potuid in tank 

 cars, we American producers could then compete Avith Chinese imported ttmg oil 

 and with other competing American vegetable oils that are inferior for the particu- 

 lar application in lacquers, in varnishes, in linoleum, and in electrical insula- 

 tion. 



Compete, and make a profit. But now, with all the production costs far above 

 10 years ago 18-cent ttmg oil simply means debt and failure for us and ruin for an 

 indtistry needed for this cotmtry's normal peacetime economy. An industry that 

 is no less than vital to our armed services in wartime. During World War 11, 

 with Chinese tung oil shut oflF, we were able to make profits tmder the OPA limited 

 price of 38?^ cents per pound in tank cars. That price is more than twice the 

 present price. Opinions differ, that if through proper Federal action correcting 

 the present abtises we could now get 30 cents per potmd for our oil in tank cars 

 most of our older orchards would do fairly well. They would harvest labor rates 

 alone now running better than three times what they were in 1940 before the 

 present inflation, and with other production costs likewise inflated it can be readily 



