Government subsidy, in the old traditional method of life in America. Then came World War II, and overnight the Government commandeered every drop of tung oil in America. All of our regular marketing was shut off overnight, and from our own plantation we shipped the oil for the making of the time bomb, so at least we helped to win the Battle of the Bulge. All pharmaceutical catheters of the entire Armed Forces and our allies were made of oil from our plantation. Of course it did not take much oil to make those pharmaceutical catheters, but my dear friends, it saved the suffering of men, and it saved the lives of men, and today pharmaceutical packaging that goes here in the heart and circles that open around the heart is made with 30 coats of tung oil on silk thread.

There was no more production at that moment. They were asking us for every drop of oil. Then the end of World War II, and while we were trying to regain our old markets in paint and varnish, we were thrown into ruinous chaos by a flood of 2 or more years of production in China. In 6 weeks time, enough oil came into this country to take care of all of our domestic requirements. Our market was ruined. We were almost ruined.

As a result, after this ruinous year, you, Members of Congress, wrote the word "tung" into law for continuing support price, that price to be set each year at the discretion of the Department of Agriculture from 60 to 90 of parity. So far, it has not been 60.

We growers definitely appreciate this law, this support, and we hope that you will let nothing happen to the continuation of this support.

So I make one big point. I ask you to remember that we want continuation of the support of tung.

Now, I would like to make a point of secondary importance. This would just merely help us. We would like the support price to be announced by the Department of Agriculture earlier in the calendar year. This, as I understand, is discretionary with the Department of Agriculture. Today, the 24th of September, we have not received an announcement as to the support prices. This is not an annual crop, and the support prices announced cannot affect the size of the crop of oil. Nature does that, plus the harvest, and an earlier announcement would assist us with our financing and securing of bank loans.

I leave that and I come to a bad point. As to an embargo, tariff, the Chinese people were permitted to build their industry and they are permitted today to maintain it without interference from foreign oils, and, yes, we ask you for a Chinaman's chance in America.

More seriously, we have a Tung Association legislative committee and they will work with you on this, and we will work with them, and be a part of them. Today, the 24th of September, the Tung Association of America is meeting in Biloxi, Miss. I am not there because I wanted the privilege of being here. We have many facts and figures with us. If you want to ask us any questions, we might know them, we might not, but I will tell you that this old law of supply and demand works very poorly when supply, I would say, is manipulated apparently by the State Department to the benefit of some foreign country, and when demand is subject to extreme variations.

One of our mutual problems, yours and ours, we feel, is that our State Department finds it necessary to dictate economic policies that

are ruinous to our American tung industry. I have sympathy with them, for it is for the purpose of maintaining neighborly relations with various countries, thus to prevent war, and to help win the cold war. If so, if my point is right, that this helps win the cold war, then, gentlemen, we feel that our industry needs support, or it will be liquidated. We feel the bill for this support should be sent to the proper place in the bookkeeping of our Government; namely, it should be charged to the military defense of our country.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you honorable Members of Congress, and friends.

Do you have any questions that you would like to ask me?

Chairman HOPE. Are there any questions on the part of the members of the committee? There seems none. Mrs. Bennett seems to have covered the subject very well and I can easily understand why these men wanted you to speak for them. [Applause.]

The next witness is Mr. Finlayson, the president of the Florida Farm Bureau.

STATEMENT OF E. H. FINLAYSON, PRESIDENT OF THE FLORIDA FARM BUREAU

Mr. FINLAYSON. Mr. Chairman, honorable Members of this Congress, and fellow farmers, as president of the Florida Farm Bureau representing some 13,000 farm families, I believe it would be amiss if I did not add our voice to that of Congressman Herlong and Congressman Matthews in urging you Members of Congress to take this trip into our State and get a good bird's-eye view of our agriculture. I do not have much to say on the farm program for this reason, I could give you the position of members of the Farm Bureau as of last November. That is when we had our last annual meeting. We are having another one this coming November.

Due to the change in economic conditions, which was brought about by the cost-price squeeze, we felt that there was a possibility of changing the position among some of our members, so we thought it would be best to wait and get a resurvey from them.

At this time we are holding county farm bureau meetings all over the State. I might say we had a report from Jackson County this morning that was called by that county farm bureau in Jackson County, who got the businessmen in with them. We are holding similar meetings in each county. We are asking each individual farmer to make suggestions to the committee we have set up, the resolutions committee. They will present those suggestions in the form of resolutions to the membership for their approval or disapproval. They in turn will go to our State convention in November, and I am very happy to say that one of the members of your committee will be principal speaker at our convention, Congressman Herlong.

That will be taken up by our State resolutions committee, and those resolutions have been consolidated on a national and State basis. They will then be carried to the farm bureau, and you will get our position through them, and Congressman Herlong and Congressman Matthews will certainly get our position from our State.

Certainly it is a privilege to have you folks down here in our section, and I welcome you to Florida and hope you have a nice stay with us down there. I am sure you will.

Chairman HOPE. We thank you very much, Mr. Finlayson. The next witness will be Mr. Houser Davidson, of Fort Valley, Ga. Will you come forward, Mr. Davidson?

STATEMENT OF HOUSER DAVIDSON, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICTS

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen; I want to add my appreciation, too, Mr. Chairman, for you people coming down Southeast, particularly to Georgia, and I hope you have noticed that we do wear shoes down here sometimes. I am a farmer. I have never had one penny that did not come off the farm. I am a soil conservation regional supervisor in the central part of Georgia, and I would just like to say a few words to you concerning our regional offices of the Soil Conservation Service.

I did not know a thing in the world about this move that it might be abolished until this spring. I was in Washington before the House Subcommittee on Agricultural Appropriations, and I found it out right quickly. There was talk of it, and the talk still goes on. I would like to say just a few words to you, hoping that something I might say might make you see that we do, in the Southeast, like our regional offices.

The idea was that maybe the money spent by the regional offices would do more good if used for more technicians in districts. This is false economy. I know my district needs more technical help from the Soil Conservation Service, and I think most other districts do, too. But we do not need this extra help if it means a loss in the quality of assistance we get, or a slowdown in the spread of better methods and better grasses and clovers for our conservation program.

I want to impress on you that a small group of top notch regional technicians is the best insurance I know that soil conservation districts will keep on getting first rate technical help, and keep up to date on the improvements we need in our soil-conservation work.

One of the great things I think they have done, as you know, the Southeast has suddenly become cattle conscious. I think it is going to stay a cattle country, just to even things off nowadays.

We have had sudden pasture growers all over the Southeast, and if our regional offices had not been available, I do not believe it could have been done in 5 years' word-of-mouth, friends, natives, whathave-you.

Talking to you about the regional office, you know I have the finest wife, the finest son, the finest farm-I even have the finest dog in Georgia, and to me I have the finest regional office in America. I have visited the regional office at Spartanburg many times, and the supervisor has talked to me and many others of the southeastern soilconservation district supervisors, and in the talks he has found-you know he cannot talk like they can. He does not know how to talk, so he just talked to us and found what the district supervisor was trying to do, in their programs and in that way he has been able I know to help us with our program without going around out of the way, or any other way other than just in a normal procedure. The cost of the regional office, after I heard this spring about this, that there might be a possibility of losing it, knowing the kind of

results our district will get from having a regional office, I never asked about the efficiency of the office in Spartanburg until after Congress raised the question. So I asked some questions of my own, and here are two little things.

In 1943 the regional office used 16 percent of the funds available for the district in the southeastern area. In 1953 just under 9 percent of public funds-46-were used at the regional office. The southeastern regional office in Soil Conservation Service has cut out onefifth of the employees in the regional level since 1943, while the number of employees below the regional office has increased nearly 65 percent.

I believe this is a good record. I believe our district is getting good technical information, new grasses for our conservation program at least 5 years faster because we have a regional office, and I want to ask you, please, when you go back to Washington, think about what the regional offices might be doing for us poor fellows out there on the farm in need of assistance. Maybe it will save money. I do not know. I have no argument with you, but it will save more money from an appropriation point of view than it would save if you would give me added assistance that will come through this district office.

Chairman HOPE. Thank you, Mr. Davidson.

The next witness will be Mr. W. H. Hall, of Sparta, Ga.

STATEMENT OF W. H. HALL, MEMBER, SOIL-CONSERVATION COMMITTEE, SPARTA, GA..

Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, friends, I am W. H. Hall, from Sparta, Ga., a charter member of the great soilconservation committee in Georgia.

I have quite a job here to do this afternoon in a very few minutes, in deference to your patience, and the hard trip you have been on. Our four States here represented requested me to say a few words for them, namely, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina, and I have here in my hands statements from the gentlemen of these States that I wish to present in testimony along with a few remarks of my own.

You will recall that 20 years ago, President Roosevelt referred to the Southeastern States as being the No. 1 economic problem of the Nation. God forbid that that condition ever return. Let us review the changes since that time.

In 1935 the Soil Conservation Service was established and a net return was then reduced, good land use-that is, finding out the capabilities of our land, planting them in crops to which they were best suited, and feeding them plant food to which they responded best. This new way of farming was brought to us by Soil Conservation Service technicians, trained to diagnose the ills of our land, as a doctor does a person, and making recommendations accordingly. This work was greatly assisted by soil-conservation supervisors working through a district program.

Today there are 12,500 supervisors serving free, working with all State and Federal agencies and with other groups in conserving all our natural resources, thereby making this a better country in which to live by improving our lands and producing more abundant crops.

Our Soil Conservation Service, as you know, costs each person in the United States only 40 cents this year. Figure yourself, 160 million people, $69 million appropriation. In World War II we spent the equivalent of $150 per acre for every acre in the United States to protect it from our enemies from without, and I think you will agree that erosion and poor land use can destroy us as completely as a foreign enemy.

Please consider the progress made in recent years under the present setup, and let's strengthen. You are trying to make our Government more efficient and economical. Can you beat our Soil Conservation Service at 40 cents per year per capita, with 12,500 soil-conservation district supervisors that do not cost the Federal Government a single cent?

With further reference to the regional offices, would I have the privilege of asking you and your committee a few questions, please, sir?

Chairman HOPE. We would like to have you ask them. We will not guarantee to answer them.

Mr. HALL. Why are you considering abolishing the regional offices? Chairman HOPE. Well, in reply to that, this committee has given no consideration that I know of to abolish the regional offices. I think you must be referring to the Committee on Agricultural Appropriations. I understand there was some discussion in the course of the hearings on the agricultural appropriation bill this year when it was under consideration by the Committee on Appropriations, but this committee has held no hearings, and if there has been any consideration given, it has been given by individual members and not by the committee.

I do not know if there has been any consideration given by any individual member, but there has been no committee action by our committee.

Mr. HALL. It is my feeling about this situation, each region I manage is doing a good job according to its leadership. In other words, you might find a different type of soil-conservation program in the several regions of the Nation, and I am afraid if we eliminate those and try to operate in 48 separate States, that we will wind up with 48 different soil-conservation programs peculiar unto its immediate State line. On an economical standpoint I just cannot see how we could administer from Washington to the west coast to way down. on the gulf coast, and all the far-flung points of the United States from Washington, D. C., or any other central point as cheaply, as economically, and efficiently as is beind done by our regional program that we have now.

I hope you gentlemen will give this deep consideration before you make a mistake on it. Our country to me is like a great manufacturing plant. There has been some talk about emphasis on research and marketing, and I agree with it, but if you expect to find a manufacturer that spent all his money, or a great part of it, on research, better methods and marketing, and failed to protect that source of raw material on which the very life of that factory depends, to me the soil and water resources of this country are basic. The Department of Agriculture and all the others in the United States are based on our continued rich soil and the water that the Lord sprinkles on