In 1933, everyone was certain that the Government was crazy for loaning 45 cents a bushel on corn. Yet in 1934 corn sold as high as 85 cents. In 1936, the war years of 1942 and 1943, and the short crop of 1947, used up all surpluses. Again we hear that cry of great surpluses. Who knows what 1954 will bring? Is the farmer entitled to a fair return on his investment? Does his dollar equal that of other businesses in purchasing power?

That is a figure arrived at by experts denoting what a farmer should receive to give him this purchasing power. Under present systems of support the farmers have been able to maintain their prices and a decent living for their families.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Next is Franklin Groomes.

STATEMENT OF FRANKLIN GROOMES, MENLO, IOWA

Mr. GROOMES. I am a farmer and own and operate 560 acres of land. I am a cattle feeder who has taken a beating along with the rest.

As I listen to discussion groups and ponder on the things they say, I begin to realize how little we see of the picture of life in our time.

There are 2,400 million people in the world, the majority of which are never adequately fed, clothed, sheltered, or healthy. People who think with their stomachs, who live and work much as their ancestors did a thousand years ago. People who are beginning to realize that there are better conditions and therefore are in a state of upheaval. People who will turn or are turning to communism, if no better philosophy promises to relieve their hunger.

Many more, better educated and advanced people have been placed in a similar position by the devastation of recent wars. We have seen such rapid changes, yet still fail to realize their import. We have seen the creeping paralysis of socialism destroy the power of the British Empire more effectively than an outside enemy could have done, which has left us with the responsibility for leadership as the world's strongest Nation to defend freedom.

We, a nation of only 160 million people controlling half the wealth and most of the modern inventions of the world, are one of the very few nations able to adequately feed its people and produce a surplus. Yet we sit discussing how to handle that surplus; some of us proposing to eliminate it by acreage controls.

The food-package barrage in Berlin has shaken the Communist world perhaps more effectively than any bombing could have done. We should realize that a surplus of food, especially such easily stored products as corn and wheat, constitutes a mighty weapon for peace. And, instead of discussing how to eliminate it, we should plan the technique for distributing it to the trouble spots of famine across the world, meanwhile continuing to produce as usual.

If we had used more vision in the early thirties, we might have led to the prevention of World War II. If we have the vision now, we may prevent world war III. The tragedy of our time is the weapons of the atomic age in the hands of people with a caveman philosophy of life. We have learned to send our armies, our ships, our weapons, and our technique across the world. It has been necessary, but it has failed to produce peace. Why not try sharing our surplus of the

good things of life? It will be far less expensive and may prove more effective. We have, in the past, made small beginnings through the Marshall plan and through UNESCO.

In an economy which has minimum-wage laws, minimum-price supports on basic farm commodities would seem necessary to keep our system in balance, for prosperity is an adequate flow of goods and services at prices people can afford to pay. But farm production cannot be arbitrarily controlled because crop yields depend so much on weather conditions which can change yield per acre from 50 to 100 percent in a short time. However, supply can be coordinated with domestic demand by using our surplus judiciously to achieve peace. However, surplus must not be confused with normal reserve supplies against drought or crop failure.

Using food surpluses to promote peaceful relations with the hungry portions of the world will no more be a Government subsidy than Government buying of industrial products for defense, and is far less drain on our economy than war.

If the farmers of the Corn Belt follow the example of the wheat growers and vote for Government production controls, they shall begin to sell their birthright for a very uncertain mess of pottage. Moreover, they begin to fall victim to the creeping paralysis of a philosophy that has already infiltrated some other segments of our population. In this land, one of the last citadels of freedom, let us remember its foundations, that they must be renewed in the lives of each generation, or they will fall.

Our food surplus is our most effective weapon for peace. Let us learn to use it, not fear it and destroy it.

Mr. HOEVEN. Thank you, Mr. Groomes. I see Elmer Carlson of Audubon, Iowa is here.

STATEMENT OF ELMER CARLSON, AUDUBON, IOWA

Mr. CARLSON. I am Elmer Carlson of Audubon, Iowa. Yes, I have husked corn, too. I was in Europe a year ago teaching them how to husk and using the husking hook. I am a farmer, feeder, hybrid seed producer, and a newspaperman. I am sponsoring the program Meat the People-m-e-a-t-on TV, radio, and newspapers. I wrote all of our Congressmen and Senators early this week, also all of our legislators in this six-State area.

May I read you a few short excerpts: from J. G. Lucas, Madrid:

Just yesterday in brousing through a magazine I ran across an advertisement stating the superior food qualifites of meat. I was rather impressed with the conviction that I should eat more meat. I believe in advertising and I am convinced with you that good advertising would increase meat consumption. From Francis L. Kerr, Shelby County:

At any rate, since meat is such an excellent food and since we have such a big story to tell, the producers, processors, and merchandisers of animal food should and indeed must get together and tell their story to the public. More power to you in your effort.

From John Brownlie, Winterset, Iowa:

I am very much in sympathy with Benson in trying to find a solution to the farm problem, but the Democrats are hollering to high heaven, exaggerating the situation.

I guess maybe some Republicans, too. Next from Senator Guy Gillette :

I have just received your letter with enclosure and the press release and the clippings from the Omaha World Herald. Any reader of history is sure to recall that in the early days of all of our great empires it was made a penal offense to cut production of food or to restrict its distribution and accessibility.

That is the end of the letters. Yes, Meat the People will go a long way to cure our agricultural bellyache. How? By consistent advertising of our best food products, meat. Written right now. Where? To all of our people, especially in the cities. By whom? By every one of us farmers, feeders, purchasers of cattle, and corn.

Yes, wide-awake businessmen had better advertise meat. It will win the farmers as well as anything else. For a healthy agricultural economy, it will clean up our grain surplus in short order. Yes, while in Europe last fall teaching corn husking, our farm manager didn't buy cattle, so we have 500 big cattle on credit. We are spending that $30,000 now to advertise Meat the People. Yes, we need not only to talk but to do something ourselves. That, along with the good farmparity program will work out our surplus problem. Remember, we have the world's best product, meat.

Let's advertise and sell it and make everyone happy.
(Document submitted by Mr. Carlson is as follows:)

"MEAT THE PEOPLE"

We are a meat-eating industrial nation. Less than 2 percent of us have all the meat we want to eat. Meat eating is very healthy, nonfattening and I imagine two-thirds of us are overweight or concerned about it. It is good for our agricultural economy to consume our feed-grain surpluses, and another nice thing is everybody—or at least 99 percent of the people-likes meat and thoroughly enjoy eating meat.

We can and will increase meat production instead of cutting back. I believe 5 percent a year, for anyway the next 5 years, which will give us 25-percent increase in meat consumption, is a good goal. The reason more meat is not being eaten today is because of lack of advertising the product. Much more should be done to make the people aware of the fine nutritive and health qualities of meat. More should be done in educating the people on proper preparations and handling of meat. Much research should be done on improving the efficiency of the production of meat, as on the horizon or already here are waste fats and tallows that are presently in big surpluses, yet have shown a big increase in meat production at considerably lower cost. The wider use of roughages and improved protein-rich legumes, ammoniated silages, and citrus pulp and urea are also being successfully fed.

Advertising: Now, the farmer and feeder only spends 1 cent per head for cattle, one-fifth of a cent for hogs and sheep that go to slaughter. Much of this, on a nationwide program, must be spent necessarily for administration, overhead, travel, and so forth, and I'm sure it does not leave much for effective promotion of meat. This fund for promotion amounts to approximately 1 cent of every 20,000 cents of gross income or one two-hundredths of 1 percent. Yes, only 1 cent for $200. We at Carlson's in our hybrid seed-corn business, spend 3 to 4 percent or, roughly, 600 to 800 times as much money in advertising and promotion of our hybrid corn. This is about average for our industry. Folks in the perfume business spend, the records indicate, up to 200 to 300 percent of the value of the product. I am sure there is less spent for meat than any other finished food commodity, or probably any other commodity that is ready for consumption. The retail grocer, according to a dozen newspapers I checked over-and I also called our local grocer-indicates 10 percent of their grocery ads was devoted to meat. But meats were 25 percent of grocery dollar sales in the rural areas, and 35 to 40 percent of the volume purchased in the cities. The meats generally carry a 10-percent higher markup than cereal products.

A real meat economy is the safest there is for our country, with the valuable health food that it is thrown in for a bonus. It gives us a reserve in case of sudden military or world demand or widespread drought conditions, in which case it offers the opportunity of slaughtering excess meat animals and at the same time to rapidly build up grain surpluses. It would give an evenness to our economy and would tend to level out the wide swings in the past that give ulcers and discontent to the ranchers, the farmers, and the bankers. It would give welcome relief and pleasure to our taxpayers and not expose us to the risk of destroying the present agricultural program which is merely an extension of the Biblical plan of several thousand years ago. About the only supplement we have added to that now is that we have refrigeration in this 20th century. A nation makes more and sounder progress with plenty than scarcity or unmanageable surpluses, and their inevitable dumping, which would surely and rapidly lose us valuable world neighbors, as we can well remember the Australian beef cargo and other countries who offered meats at below our level of prices. If we will keep progressive and competitive, we will be sound and safe from meat imports at ruinous prices.

Better consumer relations are very necessary and important. We should outplan the slap-happy big radio commentators and news columnists (who are often name building for themselves or their sponsor). With larger volume, more efficient production, better advertising and merchandising, they cannot give trouble of any consequence. We must do more research and do a better job of pleasing our big-city consumers, as I can well imagine there are still many housewives who painfully remember the $1.25 to $1.50 per pound meat costs, still detouring that meat counter, and their eye being caught by a big flashy box of a few ounces of puffed cereal, or even the misnomer of pork and beans with a few tiny pieces of pork in the can.

This is a program I feel will offer the opportunity to serve agriculture in the broadest sense, in helping the producer, the feeder, the packer, the processor, and the retailer to give the consumer more and better meat at a reasonable profit for our share of the production costs.

I have sincerely appreciated your taking time to come here to help launch the "Meat the People" program, and I will always be interested in any suggestions on how to help "meat" the people.

(Introductory talk given by Elmer G. Carlson at the "Meat the People" program, August 11, while introducing the guest speaker, Mr. R. C. Pollock, secre tary and general manager of the National Livestock and Meat Board, Chicago.) Mr. HOEVEN. Thank you.

The next witness is Mr. J. P. Hansen, of Otranto, Iowa.

STATEMENT OF J. P. HANSEN, OTRANTO, IOWA, PRESIDENT, MITCHELL COUNTY FARMERS UNION

Mr. HANSEN. Honorable Chairman of the committee, I am J. P. Hansen. I am a farmer living at Otranto, Iowa, near the Minnesota border. I farmed all my life. I am now on the last quarter of the century. I am for full parity because I earn it, and more. My fellow farmers and I work longer hours than any other class of skilled labor. We gladly perform the most necessary task of all, providing our Nation with the most plentiful supply of food provided any nation.

We are not second-class citizens, and do not intend to be bankrupted again, and reduced to peasantry or peonage, all because it is necessary that we have buying power to keep city workers busy-or a general depression is inevitable.

I am also in favor of a ceiling on prices. I don't want myself or any other farmer to make a hog of themselves. If we do not have men enough in our Government who have the understanding and the moral courage to keep our people employed and prosperous, building homes, schools, hospitals, roads, factories, and feeding our people,

and healing our mental and physical ills without war or militarism, may God help us.

Thank you.

Mr. HOEVEN. Thank you, Mr. Hansen.

Next is William Wisdom, representing the Iowa REA.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM WISDOM, DES MOINES, IOWA, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, IOWA REA

Mr. WISDOM. I am William H. Wisdom, and I am the executive secretary of the Iowa Association of the Rural Electric Cooperatives. There are 55 cooperatives in Iowa financed by loans from the Rural Electrification Administration furnishing electric service to 132,000 farms in Iowa.

On behalf of our association, I would like to make this statement: It is absolutely necessary that the Rural Electrification Administration be continued, both as to distribution cooperatives, and as to generation and transmission cooperatives. Since the Government has a mortgage on the entire properties of the cooperative, there is no other source to which the cooperative can turn for borrowing, because it cannot give better than a second mortgage as security.

Consequently the loan authority of the Administration must be continued, both as a legal matter with the Congress making loan authorizations available, and as an administrative matter with the Administrator making loans for the necessary expansion of facilities. The bringing of electricity to the farmer is an investment by the Government, being returned manyfold. The farmer has a larger net income because of the use of electricity; the suppliers have larger incomes as a tax base; and much of the money spent by the cooperatives in construction has found its way back into the Treasury in the way of taxes.

Furthermore, the record of the cooperatives as to repayment has been unexcelled. The cooperative has an obligation to bring to the member all of the electric energy he needs in his home and his farm business, which often requires additional capital investment in heavier transmission and distribution lines and additional capacity in transformers and other equipment.

Since the creation of a market must also guarantee a supply, the necessity of generation and transmission should also be recognized and provided for. The farmer has developed an appetite for electricity which cannot be denied. Having brought into existence the distribution unit, provision must also be made to keep adequate quantities of electricity in the system. It is therefore necessary that the right to generate electricity at their own generating plants and transmit that electricity over their own transmission lines must be both fact and practice.

It is necessary that the Congress authorize loans for generation and transmission lines, and that the Administrator make loans for such purposes, to assure that the distribution cooperatives, through their own generation and transmission cooperatives, or purchasing from a commercial profit power company, will receive the lowest possible wholesale power rate.

We would also urge the development of hydroelectricity as fast as feasible projects can be developed. Only the Government can con