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532 AGRICULTURAL APPROPRIATION BELL, 1924. 



then for the market, and Mr. Qiiisenberry told me that they had not 

 had one pound of feed except what they got on the natural pasture. 

 I went out in the pasture, and out on the black lands in the rear, 

 that so much has been said about. I found there a beautiful growth 

 of Bermuda orass. Some of you know what Bermuda grass is. In a 

 portion of it tliere was a wondei-ful growth of white clover. It was 

 fine, and certainly the cattle had thrived upon it. They had gotten 

 very fat. and were in splendid condition on the native pasture. 



"i ou will bear in mind, gentlemen, that the trouble on these low- 

 lands does not occur for usually more than 00 days in the spring of 

 any year. The}^ had some trouble last spring, which you heard about, 

 from the great overflow in the Mississippi River. A large area of 

 land in the vState was overflowed. There was a break of the levee in 

 Concordia Parish, and there were two breaks below New Orleans. 

 We had a great deal of destruction there. The high water backed up 

 on some parts of this farm and did some damage, but it was only 

 temporary damage. The grass continued to grow. Water does npt 

 hurt Bermuda grass, and I have seen the most beautiful crop of Ber- 

 muda grown on land that had been overflowed for 60 days and 

 sometimes for 90 days. As a matter of fact, the grass is benefited 

 by that overflow, and you must not be bothered about that. You 

 must bear this thought in mind, that this farm was put there origi- 

 nally to help the people of the sugar section on the Gulf to combat 

 this condition and to help them make a crop of some kind in addition 

 to cane on the lands subject to overflow. When a sugar plantation 

 is overflowed and the seed is destroyed, it costs a good deal to reseed 

 it. You do not put sugar cane seed in the ground at an expense of 

 one or two dollars per acre, as can be done in the case of most other 

 crops, and some of them for less than that, but it costs a very large 

 sum. I can not tell you how much. 1 



Mr. Bucii.\.\AN. You must get the cane and plant it. 



Senator Ransdell. Yes, sir; you must get the cane itself and put 

 it in the ground, and that is cjuite an expensive proposition. Further- 

 more, the people with statesmanlike vision, wnen in 1914 they were 

 threatened with the absolute destruction of the sugar industry in 

 Louisiana, realized that something else must be produced. That 

 applies not only to Louisiana but to a portion of Texas, and it is 

 something of an industry now in Florida. They felt that it was 

 necessaiT to do something in that section to build up a live-stock 

 iiulustry. They felt that any genuine agriculture must be based 

 upon live stock anyhow. It was then we asked Congress to show us 

 how to raise cattle in Louisiana in the sugar-cane section, so that if 

 the sugar planters were put out of that business they could do some- 

 thing elso that would he prolitable. They were also extremely 

 anxious to have some kind of industry carried on on those heavy ^ 



black lands which are on the rear of every plantation practically in 

 that c(tuntry. I have them on my place, and everybody has them, 

 ('ertain portions of this area would be very line for cane, other por- 

 tions for corn, or, perhaps, for cotton. In many sections the lands 

 were (in(> for rice. 



We wanted to have some kind of agricultural industry inthatcountry, 

 in addition to cane, cotton, or rice, and we ditl nt)t know how to get 

 at it. We had been a one-idea peo|)le in my section of the State, 

 where cotton was king. In western Louisiana sugar was king, and 



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