GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 781 



Mr. Murray. Do you know anyone in the United {States who has as 

 much power today, without asking any more, as the Secretary of 

 Agricidture, outside of the President himself? 



Mr. Edwards. He has a lot of it, I know. 



Mr. Murray. He controls pretty much om* grocery bills. 



Wliat disturbs me is an editorial in the paper this morning that after 

 farm prices have been cut from a third to a half, there is less than 1 

 percent difference in the cost of living in March 1948. That is what 

 makes me question the Brannan plan; because, if we are going to help 

 the consumer by it, why waste a few hundred million dollars more on 

 the program? 



Another pertinent point I think you brought out is that any one of 

 us who knows anything about livestock knows you would have to have 

 the thousands of OPA's and all of its relatives back on the Federal 

 pay roll and with a shotgun out for everybody. 



Air. Edwards. Every cowman's business differs, like every woman's 

 bread differs; yet they all make bread; and he don't want anyone to 

 tell him just how to run his business. If he does, you tangle it up. 



Mr. Murray. And you do not want it, anyway. 



Mr. Edwards. No, su\ 



Mr. Pace. Thank you very much, Mr. Edwards. 



The next witness is Mr. P. O. Wilson, secretary-manager, National 

 Livestock Producers Association. 



STATEMENT OF P. 0. WILSON, SECRETARY-MANAGER, NATIONAL 

 LIVESTOCK PRODUCERS ASSOCIATION, CHICAGO, ILL. 



Mr. Wilson. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my 

 name is P. O. Wilson. I am secretary-manager of the National 

 Livestock Producers Association, Chicago, 111. 



This statement is presented for the National Livestock Producers 

 Association, 139 North Clark Street, Chicago, 111., which is a coopera- 

 tive service organization, owned and operated by 19 cooperative 

 livestock sales associations which render livestock selling service to 

 more than 450,000 producer-members on 62 of this country's livestock 

 markets. These markets are scattered throughout the principal 

 producmg areas and extend from Buffalo, N. Y., to Los Angeles, 

 Calif. 



During 1948 our 19 units, operating on these 62 markets, handled 

 for their producer-members 10,873,678 head of livestock, having a 

 value of $738,435,867. This supply of livestock originated in 32 

 States of the Union and Canada. 



Our producer-members, as well as their organizations, have expe- 

 rienced all of the difRculties of producing and merchandising under 

 the wide range of conditions that have prevailed in this country 

 during the past two or three decades. They know that in good times 

 when national income is at a high level, it is not difficult to move the 

 livestock supply through a free market from our farms and ranches 

 into consumptive channels at fairly satisfactory prices. They also 

 know that, in periods of depression when national income is low and 

 many people are unemployed, the demand for their product is slow 

 even at low prices. 



This same group also knows that every attempt on the part of our 

 Government to maintain higher prices for a particular commodity 

 than actually exists in a free market costs a lot of money, and that 



