I. A. A. Record — March, 1934 



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Billion income For Agriculture Our Goal 

 Pres. Ed O'Neal Tells Meeting at Peoria 



O. C. JOHNSTONE 



THE farmers of the United 

 States are learning as never 

 before the value of co-operative 

 action in solving their problems, Ed- 

 ward A. O'Neal, president of the 

 American Farm Bureau Federation, 

 said in addressing approximately 400 

 grain producers, elevator managers, 

 and officials at the annual meeting of 



the Illinois Grain 

 Corporation in the 

 Jefferson Hotel, 

 Peoria, Feb. 22. 

 "Take advantage 

 of the new oppor- 

 tunity," said the 

 national farm 

 leader. "Accept 

 the challenge to 

 build your co-op- 

 erative marketing 

 i n stitutions 

 stronger. Take 

 the advice of your President, Frank- 

 lin D. Roosevelt, when he said, 'the 

 farmer must learn to be master of 

 his own house.' Control the supply of 

 your product as well as the marketing 

 of it — not let the other fellow do it 

 for you." 



American agriculture is on the way 

 up, continued Mr. O'Neal, but there's 

 plenty of work ahead. The national 

 farm income last year was about $6,- 

 000,000,000, a better showing by 24% 

 than the year before. Our job is to 

 put another six billions onto that in- 

 come to make it 12 billions. The same 

 must be done for labor. The income 

 of the farmer goes up and down with 

 the income of the working man. 



Outlining the proposed amendments 

 to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, 

 the speaker said that the AAA should 

 not be considered as an emergency 

 measure alone. "We are going to keep 

 on fighting until we secure equality 

 under the American tariff. To that 

 end we propose to amend the title of 

 the Act to make possible the con- 

 tinuance of present efforts toward re- 

 storing the income of American farm- 

 ers until the job is done." * 



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;; V , Proposed Amendments 



Among the amendments that have 

 received favorable consideration arc: 

 (1) authorizing the Secretary of Ag- 



riculture to determine basic periods 

 with respect to parity prices for dif- 

 ferent farm commodities; (2) giving 

 the Secretary the necessary power to 

 reduce the cost of distributing farm 

 products; (3) limiting the Secretary 

 in the licensing of agricultural pro- 

 ducers to those who process or distrib- 

 ute direct to the consumer; (4) no com- 

 pulsory quotas or allotments to farm- 

 ers unless two-thirds of the producers 

 of a commodity agree on an acreage 

 or crop reduction program; (5) recom- 

 mending that the Secretary of Agri- 

 culture use co-operative marketing as- 

 sociations in administering the Agri- 

 cultural Adjustment Act insofar as 

 possible; (6) take marginal lands out 

 of production through government 

 purchase and adding such lands to the 

 public domain. 



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Cotton Income Doubled ^ •;:'- 



Mr. O'Neal told how cotton and 

 tobacco farmers of the South had had 

 their income more than doubled by the 

 AAA crop adjustment and marketing 

 agreement program. "When those cot- 

 ton farmers plowed up 10 million acres 

 of cotton, don't forget that they helped 



you corn belt farmers," he said. "The . 

 cottonseed oil that was destroyed was 

 enough to displace all the lard pro- 

 duced in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. 

 And when the price of cotton went 

 from 5c to 13c per pound, the South • 

 had more money to buy your pork, 

 dairy products, fruit, beef, etc. A 

 friend of mine down in North Caro- ; 

 Una," he continued, "told me that the ^ 

 government better do something about 

 getting all farmers to co-operate in 

 this adjustment program or there will 

 be more night riding and tracking 

 down of tobacco and even barn-burn- 

 ing between sundown and sunup than 

 the tobacco sections have even seen." 

 (applause) '!:. ^ 



The farm organizations had to fight 

 to keep the administration of indus- 

 tries utilizing farm products within 

 the AAA, O'Neal said, and to show 

 why this was important to farmers he; 

 told how 95 per cent of the liquor dis- 

 tillers had been brought under an 

 agreement to make liquor out of grain 

 exclusively and pay the parity price 

 for it, which in the case of corn means ,' 

 around 75 cents per bushel. , , / 



Blow a Hole i . ^' S 



Speaking of the tariff, he said, 

 "we've got to blow a hole in the tariff . 

 wall, send our surplus farm products 

 through it to foreign countries, and 

 take some of the products ^f foreign 

 industry back. It's time for us to 

 do some horse trading. Our foreign 

 diplomacy hasn't helped the Amer- ; 

 ican farmer. Through powerful or-" 



ganization we can and will get someF 



t- ■ 



action that will help us." 



In his annual report President G. C.> 

 Johnstone of the Grain Corporation 



1934 BOARD OF DIRECTORS ILLINOIS GRAIN CORP. 



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Front roT%- left to rit;:ht: Eu^eue Curtis, Fred Romine, G. C. Johnstone, Walter 

 Thomas, W. H WatKou. 



Center row: H. K. Johnston. Harrison Fahrnkopf, managrer, E. E. Stevenson/ 

 Geo Ij. Potter, E. D. Lawrence, B. L. Baird, Charles Schmitt. 



Top row left to rli;ht: H l». .loy, Ralph Alien* Fred Zimmerman, A. R. Wright 

 and F. D. Barton, Held man. 



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