GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 797 



1933 to destroy the wheat crop. They might have droughts to destroy 

 the corn and oats and hay crops hke we bad in 1934 and again in 

 1936. Or they might have a war hke Workl War II. But history 

 shows that efforts by one man to control prices and production in the 

 past have invariably resulted in chaos, confusion, and shortages. The 

 most famous case of historical record was that of Joseph of Biblical 

 fame. But before he was through he had used his power over the food 

 to enslave all of the people of Israel, taking from them their money, 

 their horses, their land, their flocks and herds and after breaking up 

 the families, scattering them all over the nation as slaves. Caesar 

 also was ambitious. So was Hitler. So was OPA. It is time to call 

 a halt on such trends. 



Last July Harry Reed, Chief of the Beef Division of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, told me that if Canadian cattle were permitted 

 entry into this country, they did not have over 100,000 head that could 

 come in. Yet when the bars were let down in what we feeders think 

 was the first step in a deliberate attempt so break livestock prices, 

 400,000 head or their equivalent in meat came in. 



Last July and August the Department of Agriculture officials de- 

 clared most emphatically, in the press and over the air, that livestock 

 prices could not be expected to break until the end of 1949. They asked 

 farmers to increase production of the fall pig crop of 1948. They 

 asked them to increase the size of the spring pig crop of 1949. Hardly 

 had their statement that livestock prices would not break until late in 

 1949 been issued before prices started to crack. Now the Secretary 

 of Agriculture tells you that he will soon be supporting the hog 

 market, that the marketing of those fall pigs (in which he asked an 

 increase in production), and particularly the spring pig crop (in which 

 he asked an increase of 19 percent in production), would so depress 

 prices that he would have to buy pork products when the market gets 

 10 percent below a fair exchange value of pork for other commodities. 

 If they were going to be such a burden on the market as to carry prices 

 down 10 percent below that fair exchange value, why did he ask for 

 the increase in the first place? 



Yet this is the man and the Department which, in a throw-back to 

 the feudal days of central Europe which our ancestors came to this 

 country to escape, are now asking not only the American farmei bu 

 American consumers as well to place in theii* hands complete power over 

 prices and production of agricultural products. That would be the 

 most dangerous thing ever done by Congress. It would jeopardize 

 the food supply of the Nation by leaving the detei^mination as to its 

 production in the hands of a few men who have proved their inability 

 anticipate actual conditions and who cannot possibly control nature 

 even if they might control acreage. 



WOULD BREAK BREEDERS OF PUREBRED LIVESTOCK 



The Secretary of Agriculture is reported asking support of a bill to 

 permit him to start direct payments on hogs immediately. If enacted 

 that program would break every rancher of the country. It would 

 break every breeder of pureblood cattle in the country. It would 

 break every breeder of pureblood sheep and sheep rancher in the 

 country. It would break the chicken raisers, the turkey raisers. It 

 would be completely disastrous. 



