GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 819 



ing most of the workers in such large companies as Morrell, Hormel, 

 Hygrade, Eangan, and Tobin, and also with numerous smaller packing 

 companies. 



For some years it has been the policy of the UPWA to devote much 

 attention toward promoting better relations with farmers. I shall 

 not take the committee's time to outline in detail our activities along 

 this line. However, I am frank in emphasizing that om' interest in 

 farmers, especially in those who raise and market livestock, is based 

 on very practical considerations affecting the interests of these farmers 

 as well as ourselves. 



First. The functions performed by packinghouse workers — slaugh- 

 tering, dressing, and processing — are closely interdependent with 

 those of farmers who produce livestock. 



Second. In our day-to-day experience we find the methods the 

 Packing Trust uses for keeping wages low closely parallel its methods 

 for pushing doA\Ti prices on livestock. 



Third. Over and above these special considerations which are of 

 immediate and vital effect both to ourselves and to livestock farmers, 

 and that means most farmers, we hold, on principle, that the pros- 

 perity and welfare of city workers and working farmers can be achieved 

 only tlirough close cooperation between these two great predominantly 

 low-income groups of citizens. 



Stated a little differently: The United Packinghouse Workers 

 maintains that what is good for the vast majority of farmers is good 

 for the workers in factory, mine, and mill, and vice versa. Basically 

 the interests of the two groups are the same and not in conflict. This 

 is the conviction on which our policy is based. And because of this 

 conviction I have asked to appear before this committee. 



I would lilve at this point, Congressman, to make this a little more 

 concrete. 



I suppose most of the members of the committee are familiar with 

 the fact that some of the principal packing plants are in relatively small 

 cities, in Nebraska, in Iowa, and Alinnesota. They will have a plant 

 of about 4,000 employees at Ottumwa, Iowa, with a population of 

 25,000. There are relativel}^ large plants in such small cities as Fort 

 Dodge, Alason City, Iowa; Austin, Minn.; Albert Lea. 



Now at these plants most of those workers have themselv^es a farm 

 background. They have many relatives who are farmers, but in 

 addition to that man\ of them put in part time on farms. They are 

 in communities where the ver^; prosperity of agricultm-e determines 

 directly their own prosperity, because in so many of those small 

 places such as I have named — and also I think Congressman O 'Sullivan 

 would say that Omaha is in the same situation essentially — that if 

 there is depressed agriculture in the particular area served by Omaha, 

 then the whole community suffers; the packinghouse workers don't 

 have enough work, there are substantial lay-offs, their annual income 

 is greatly reduced; so that we can see there is an interdependence of 

 the farmer and farm prosperity, and that relatively large cities like 

 Omaha and Kansas City are quite obvioush affected when there is 

 a drop in farm prosperity. 



We have examined Secretary Brannan's program for agriculture 

 with intense interest. While I make no pretense of being an agri- 

 cultural economist, the general principles expressed in Secretary 

 Brannan's proposals strike me as sound. 



