1074 , GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



seen that a continuation of this last year's prices of from 23 cents down to 17^{ cents 

 per pound in tank cars will quickly complete our ruin. Our disaster has been 

 helped along by the deliberate misinformation about our products that has been 

 fed to the Federal Government. One lemon was that the armed forces need not 

 put tung oil on the critical materials list for stock piling because our native supply 

 was adequate for any emergency. That fairy tale was believed by the Army and 

 Navy and used against us by the Agriculture Department itself, despite the afore- 

 mentioned fact that our peacetime demand requires imports from China amovmting 

 in 1948 to better than seven times the whole American production of tung oil. 



Another source of calculated misinformation has said in Washington that we are 

 growing tung nuts without cultivation on $2-per-acre land and therefore don't 

 have any investment worth the Government's protection. Yet another lie, one 

 that was put forward skillfully enough to be accepted recently by Drew Pearson's 

 column, said that no protection was needed by us because European countries, 

 under the Marshall plan, would stimulate the demand for lemon, tung oil, and 

 other citrus crops. This, of course, implies that tung oil is edible, whereas, even 

 goats out in the orchards find the nuts and anything bearing any trace of tung oil 

 entirely indigestible. But now, at long last, there is an official investigation by 

 the Treasury Department into the charge of dumping that we have made against 

 the Chinese e.xporter speculators. The Treasury Department's decision on the 

 dumping case was due for the end of March 1949. Also another division of the 

 Treasury Department investigation will, as soon as possible, visit the Gulf coast 

 area to check our claim of hardship resulting from the dumping of the Chinese 

 product here. An excellent place for the investigators to go to check the hard- 

 ships experienced by small- and medium-sized tung orchard owners is to the 

 Ozone Tung Cooperative, a tung nut crushing mill owned by some 70 or more 

 tung orchard owners including, in part, by the writer. The co-op is located at 

 Twenty-eighth and Jackson Streets, Covington, La., about 50 miles due north of 

 New Orleans. 



The most complete and factual information can be given there by the Co-op's 

 president. Dr. Ernest Angelo, who lives nearby at Folsom, La., and by the Co-op's 

 manager, INIr. C. R. Schultz, both of them tung orchard owners and both 

 unusually competent, well-informed men. Also there are two bills now before 

 Congress, H. R. 3041, introduced by Representative Gathings or Arkansas and a 

 similar bill introduced by Representative Bill Colmer, of Mississippi. These 

 bills are on the right track, for they seek for us the same treatment that has 

 prevailed for such other necessities as wheat, corn, flax seed, potatoes, etc. That 

 treatment is parity, which would now bring us about 30 cents per pound for our 

 tung oil. But please remember, help must come soon, for the Chinese Communists 

 or otherwise can finish us off for keeps with just the 88,000 tons of tung oil they are 

 reliably estimated now to have available for export, and this crop of theirs is 

 concurrent with our American crop of tung nuts harvested in December and now 

 mostly converted into about 9,000 tons of .\merican tung oil, all on which our 

 livelihood and the security of our country precariously depends. For it should 

 be clear that the enlightened self-interest of the American tung-oil industry is 

 identical with that of our own peacetime economy in the rural Gulif coast area and 

 of our wartime security as a whole Nation. May we therefore, depend on you 

 to support the Treasury Department's investigation of the dumping charge. 

 May we depend on you to publicize the gist of this appeal wherever it will help 

 thousands of sorely tried Americans. We tung growers know it. And finally 

 may we depend on you to support and pass either the bill of Congressman Gath- 

 ings, H. R. 3041, or the bill of Congressman Colmer. 



Thank vou. 



New Orleans Association of Commerce, 



New Orleans 5, La., April 29, 1949. 

 Hon. Stephen Pace, 



Chairman, House Agricultural Committee Investigating Tung Legislation, 

 Washington, D. C. 

 Dear Congressman Pace: The agricultural committee of the New Orleans 

 Association of Commerce, located as it is near the center of tung production in 

 the Southern States, has taken a great interest in improving the plight of the 

 tung farmers of this area. 



We have learned through the Tung Growers Council of America of the activity 

 in Washington looking toward the enactment of legislation providing parity for 

 tung nuts. At this time we are writing you to add our name to the record of those 



