1186 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



four straight years, waited until the feedlots had been filled, and 

 then took steps to knock prices down when the feeder was helpless 

 to protect himself. 



As for the ranchers, they have gone through a hard winter which 

 did big destruction to their herds and flocks as well as to their fences 

 and other equipment. To keep men on the place, they have been 

 compelled to pay the highest wages in history, and the highest prices 

 of record for their machinery and equipment. Now, with the months 

 ahead when they will be cashing in on those efforts, it is unthinkable 

 that you would permit a program to go into effect that would force 

 feeders who have not yet filled their lots to bid prices far below a fair 

 level for that stock. As a political measure, it would be suicide. 



Most of the chicks have been hatched for the year. Those who 

 have made their purchases are powerless to protect themselves. Yet 

 if the price of pork smashes to levels far under a fair exchange value 

 of pork for other commodities, it must inevitably affect the prices of 

 competitive poultry, as well as beef and lamb. 



III. Its cost would run well over a billion dollars and might come 

 close to $2,000,000,000. 



Under the marketing methods on which this Nation built a pros- 

 perity that is the envy of the world, the housewife paid a price for 

 meat that took into consumption all slaughtered but not exported. 

 But under this plan, she would only have started then. 



If a limitation were not put on the weights of hogs on which the 

 subsidy was paid — and that is completely unfair and impractical as 

 I have pointed out — then the housewife might for a time find cheap 

 meat in the market places. But instead of finding lean, good pork 

 that she desires, she would find the pork chops shot through and 

 through with fat. The subsidy would be paid on the total volume 

 of hogs sold, by weight. The whole thought of the farmer would be 

 to get tonnage instead of something the housewife desired. So 

 instead of desirable meat, she would find only extremely undesirable 

 kind as that is the only possible way the packers could move the vast 

 amount of lard that would be produced. They would have to sell 

 it as meat. Her "cheap" pork chops might not be so cheap by the 

 time she trimmed them. 



And on the 15th of March she and her husband would march to 

 the offices of the Internal Revenue Department and pay and pay 

 and pay. 



Mr. Brannan has advertised so thoroughly to the housewife that 

 his plan would knock prices of meat downward that she would prob- 

 ably be dissatisfied with a price less than 25 percent below current 

 levels or 15 percent below the fixed-support level. To do this latter, 

 it probably would be necessary to knock the price of hogs down to 

 an average of at least $4 per hundred below the supports, or a sub- 

 sidy of around $10 on a 250-pound hog. Otherwise the housewife 

 would consider his program a failme. 



Last year the Government placed slaughter under Federal inspec- 

 tion at 47,615,000 head, "other wholesale and retail" slaughter at 

 12,428,000 head. They admit that this latter figure is estimated 

 and does not include farm slaughter. It was around 13,000,000 

 head. So the actual estimated slaughter for consumption was 

 around 73,000,000 head. But there was an additional disappearance 



