838 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



only a 10 percent share of the total market, while the top 10 percent 

 of the farmers have over half of the total market. If it comes to a 

 place where we have to reduce acreage on certain crops, it should 

 start with the largest farms and the suitcase farming outfits who are 

 today plowing up virgin prairie sod in the range country of the grazing 

 vStates, and that is just what they are doing out in my State of South 

 Dakota today. 



It is our emphatic opinion, however, that we should have a program 

 of abundance and not a program of scarcity. We feel that if the 

 American worker had sufficient purchasing power to buy all the food 

 and clothing needed for a minimum health standard there would be 

 little need for price-support floors for most farm commodities. 

 The Heller committee a fact-finding group at the University of 

 California, estimates that a city wage earner's family of four needs 

 $79.06 a week for a minimum level of healthful living. It is our 

 contention that a wage increase for all the workers in the country 

 would help greatly in solving the farm problem and that if wages were 

 increased to the standard set by the Heller committee no one would 

 need to worry about farm surpluses or a farm crisis. 



We are warned about the situation we are in today, and which" 

 from all indications will continue to get worse unless measures are 

 taken to remedy it, by no less a person than the Secretary of Agri- 

 culture, Clinton Anderson. Two years ago he told the meeting of the 

 National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, on January 28, 1947, that 

 "unless we have the kind of employment and purchasing power in the 

 cities the farmers can easily produce wasteful surpluses." He assured 

 us that "no matter how abundantly farmers produce, we know from 

 past experience that a good diet will not be assured for the people 

 in the cities and towns unless those people have the food dollars that 

 they need. 



Now, maintaining farm prosperity is tied up with city mass pur- 

 chasing power, which means full employment, wage increases, the 

 repeal of the Taft-Hartley law, and the reenactment of the Wagner 

 Act, together with a higher minimum wage law. 



The dire need for price-support legislation and a whole farm program 

 should be discussed too in the light of rising farm operating costs, as 

 well as falling farm prices. I agree with the statement of Mr. Charles 

 Shuman, president of the Illinois Agricultural Association, who told 

 the group's thirty-fourth annual convention that, "Unless checked 

 soon, this two-way trend can have but one result — a repetition of the 

 disaster which befell this Nation in 1929." 



One of the reasons farm operating costs continue to rise higher and 

 higher is because the farm-equipment monopolies have successfully 

 maintained prices, according to the report of the Federal Trade 

 Commission, at levels far higher than those of farm products. 



For example, the profits of International Harvester Co., one of the 

 largest farm-equipment companies, were $55,679,000 in 1948, more than 

 two and one-half times as large as the $24,477,000 profits in 1945. 

 These great profit increases were not altogether due to increased out- 

 put of the company, but to more profits per worker. Harvester's 

 profits per worker employed increased from $441 in 1945 to $748 in 

 1948, nearly 100 percent. The same general picture holds true for 

 the other larger farm machinery firms, such as Oliver, Deere, and 

 Allis-Chalmers, and at this point I wish to submit as part of my state- 



