800 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



immigration laws. Let him get behind Senate bill 1594, introduced 

 by Senator Gillette of Iowa and Senator Wherry of Nebraska. 



4. Aid the industry in finding new uses for animal products and 

 byproducts. 



5. Drastically reduce the personnel of the Department of Agri- 

 culture so taxes can be cut, and make the balance a service bureau 

 for farmers, giving them just as much information as possible on 

 supply and demand, and economical methods of production so they 

 may make up their own minds as to how much of what product they 

 will produce. 



6. In support of other agricultural prices such as grain, first of all 

 determine a parity on the basis of what, in a series of normal years, 

 (exceeding those of war, drought, or other abnormal years) has proved 

 to be a natural relationship between the price of that commodity 

 and other commodities. A natural price must be a price that, on 

 the average in a series of normal years, has caused production of a 

 supply sufficient for the demand and has moved the great bulk of 

 that supply into consumption, but has left a moderate carry-over. 

 This natural price might change as production costs were lowered, 

 such as it has in potatoes. Or it might change as demand changed, 

 such as it did for a time in oats when the numbers of horses on farms 

 declined so drastically. This natural price cannot obviously be 

 based on any one period of years like 1910-14 or the past 10 years, for 

 all commodities. Changing conditions must be allowed for. If the 

 hybrid corn seed producers are successful in producing a seed that 

 will grow 200 bushels of corn commercially on the average land, then 

 the price must be permitted to adjust itself to a level that will move 

 into consumption all that is produced, or caused production only of a 

 supply that can be consumed. 



Secondly, make the Government support price of this commodity 

 at the historical average low of a series of years when supplies have 

 been large due to natural conditions, and the price of that commodity 

 has gone low compared to its natural relationship to other commodity 

 prices. Supports through loans at that average low price will thus 

 be based on common sense. History will have shown that in extreme 

 cases the price might have gone lower; but in the long run natural 

 conditions will cause the price to rise back to its natural price in 

 relation to other commodity prices. On wheat, the average low from 

 1869 to date has been made at approximately 70 percent where 1909-13 

 is used as a natural relationship of wheat to general commodities. 

 There have been times, like in 1932, after the Farm Board folly had 

 lost our export trade, that wheat sank to levels only about 48 percent 

 of its long-time relationship to general commodities. Nevertheless, 

 had loans been made or wheat purchased whenever it reached a level 

 70 percent of its natural relationship to general commodity prices over 

 that long series of years, it would have been a profitable investment. 

 Instead of costing billions of dollars, it would not only have blocked 

 disastrously low price levels, but would have made money if that 

 wheat were held until a price level was reached 110 percent of the 

 natural price. And it should be remembered, so far as the farmer is 

 concerned, that he has had more bushels to sell when the price was at 

 a level 70 percent of the natural price than he had, on the average, 

 when the price was at, say, 125 percent of that natural price. In 

 fact, it was only the abnormally large quantity he had to sell that made 



