794 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



And Mr. H. Glenn Sperry, of Macomb, 111., writes: 



I have always been opposed to the Government trying to control prices and pro- 

 duction as it jiist won't work. We now have 230 head of cattle on feed, but 

 when they are gone we'll quit if the Government still wants to tell us what we 

 can do. 



Eighteen hundred units would sure slow down things around here as lots of our 

 neighbors would have cut away down to comply. We raised 30,000 bushels of 

 corn last year to say nothing about the livestock which we produced to feed a 

 starving world. 



Mr. James B. Dunn, of Luverne, Minn., president of his State 

 livestock feeders association, wrote: 



Every clear-thinking stockman who wants to manage his own business will not 

 accede to Government control. The incentive for enterprise, risk, and individual 

 gain should be preserved to insure ciuantity and c|uality of wholesome meat. 

 Experience of past attempts to be regimented should lead to bitter opposition of 

 any regulatory controls of price and quantity of production. 



These are just a few of the expressions from farmers. 

 Now may we make some further specific criticisms of the plan— 

 and end with some of the things we would like to see done. 



HELL-BENT ON LOWER LIVESTOCK PRICES 



In his appearance before the joint session of the Agricultural Com- 

 m.ittees of the Senate and House, and in his latest appearance before 

 your subcommittee, Secretary of Agriculture Brannan has seemingly 

 been hell-bent on knocking the prices of livestock down. 



He stressed most emphatically to the ho isewife that if his program 

 went into effect the prices of livestock wou d break to a level where 

 he would be compelled to pay the farmer a subsidy equal to the 

 difference between the actual selling price and what he deemed 

 "parity." 



He told her, in his appearance before you on April 1 1 , that before 

 long he would be supporting hog prices through purchases of pork. 

 It was an open invitation to the housewife and to industrial users of 

 meat products or byproducts of all kinds to withhold purchases so 

 the price would break. They did. It did. And the feeders lost 

 heavily. 



Now, parity is supposed to be a fair exchange value of farm prod- 

 ucts for other products, the things the farmer buys. Under the 

 current program the Secretary of Agriculture is not supposed to 

 support the hog market until the price gets 10 percent below what is 

 deemed a fair exchange value of hogs for other commodities. But a 

 price only 10 percent below a fair exchange value does not seem low 

 enough for the Secretary of Agriculture. He wants it to go a whole 

 lot lower than that. 



We producers of hogs and cattle have waited in vain for the De- 

 partment of Agriculture to point out to the housewife the huge 

 increase in the overhead of the processors, the carriers, and the retailers 

 that has occurred during the past few years, due primarily to the 

 increase in costs of labor. But no such explanation of high retail 

 prices of foods has ever come. The only suggestion of the Secretary 

 of Agriculture has been — not to lower wages or at least to stop their 

 increase just as the increase in agricultural prices stopped when the 

 big corn crop was made — but to lower agriculural prices still further. 



Mr. Brannon must be a very welcome visitor in the Bureau of 



