The poultry industry in New Hampshire, which is our largest single farming business, wants little to do with Government subsidies-note I say "little"-for themselves, nor do they want to be continually burdened with high grain prices for two reasons: One, an increase for the cost of production of the grain itself, and another added cost for the taxes necessary to keep the grain prices at that high level.

Some of us refer to it as double taxation. Proof of this feeling is contained in a copy of a resolution adopted at the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Poultry Growers' Association held June 24, 1953, which I am going to leave with you. I have copies of that prepared for the committee. I will read it if you would like to have me read it.

The CHAIRMAN. You will leave a copy of it for the record?

Mr. FITTS. I certainly will. I have enough resolutions to give each member of the committee a copy. Our dairy industry, the second ranking industry in agriculture in the State, makes use of Federal marketing orders in the pricing of milk, but it must be emphasized here that these orders are such as to make constant use of supply and demand factors in arriving at the price of class 1 milk which is our most important classification for our New Hampshire dairy industry. I might say here that, aside from any prepared speech, we have a milk-control board in our State that we are very proud of. It is, we feel, working very nicely. Instead of working on the basis that your committee does-and we all know of OPA and OPS-of setting a ceiling, we set a floor. Our approach in this milk situation is something I want to bring to your attention, because I have a feeling that when we get through with these agricultural discussions, you are going to find that the answer is not in any one key word, whether it be insurance programs or two-price policies, or a subsidy payment to farmers or what it is-it is going to be worked out somehow perhaps by commodities more.

My wife always gives me a dig in my speeches to say "Why don't you tell them we want a minimum price like labor has? Who wants to work for 75 cents an hour?" No one wants to work for 75 cents an hour, but we do have certain laws setting a floor on labor. I don't work for 75 cents an hour for the State of New Hampshire. Carpenters don't work for 75 cents an hour. They are paid in proportion to the relative merits of their time and their training and what have

you.

I heard that brought out in many discussions, that if agriculture had a floor changed from time to time by the Secretary of Agriculture or such a committee as you people, the Government would not gain if we had to take this produce off the market at that figure, the farmer will still have to find his own outlet. That in essence is what we do with our milk-control board in the State of New Hampshire.

We set the low price of milk, but our milk-control board does not buy any milk. Gentlemen, you seriously think about this thing, because the Federal Government is not only setting the low price when they refer to parity, but they buy at that price, and that is what gets you fellows in all kinds of trouble.

I refer back to a statement here which shows in a way as to where you are headed with the wheat situation. These are some things, I think, your committee does not get. This, understand, is at least a

say

week before these votes had been taken as to wheat acreage. I might that your price guaranty is not going to be on the basis of acreage, it is going to be on bushels. "Don't cut your profits when your wheat acreage is reduced," is the good advice given farmers by a leading State agricultural college agronomist. "Follow college recommendations for certain fertilizers in your wheat this fall and you will harvest extra profits next summer," say the experts. With 21 percent less acreage planted to wheat, growers will have to produce cheaper wheat in order to keep out of the red. Cheaper production means higher profit.

"Fertilizer used wisely will cut costs to the bone and at the same time boost production." Gentlemen, I just warn you as to what happened when the potato situation got out of hand, and you paid for potatoes by the bushel rather than the acreage.

It so happens at this particular time that several of our commodity groups have not held their annual meetings. Some of these groups are soon to study problems relating to their particular commodity. Their is to be a meeting of the dairy industry people this week, Thursday, in my office, and the county farm bureaus in New Hampshire, for example, have already started a series of many meetings at which all farmers will have an opportunity to study the pros and cons of various problems.

Experts from the University of New Hampshire are preparing factual material for them, and they are discussing these factors to see what the people think about them in view of present conditions. When they consolidate their ideas through these resolutions at their annual meeting, which is to run on the style of the good old New England town-meeting plan, these are passed on to State and later National organizations and I am sure you will be hearing more about the results of these meetings.

In general I think it is fair to say that the majority of New Hampshire farmers think of our United States Government as the final balance in those matters too large and complicated for an individual or a small group to contend with, that their decisions being something so important should be arrived at only after very serious consideration and then only for the good of the majority.

I would further say that I believe our farmers want to seek continuous support of the following Government programs if they can be followed economically: School-lunch program, soil-conservation service, farm planning and technical service, Bangs (Brucellosis) disease eradication program in connection with our State governments, stabilized farm-price levels or an attempt at them. Continued abundance of farm production. And I might say here so that we do not leave any wrong impression, I and my people in the State recognize the fact that you have got to have more food all the time than the people in this country want to eat. It is absolutely necessary, because as I use my own home-grown example, when a milkman starts out in the morning he doesn't have any idea whether my wife wants 2 or 5 or 7 or 10 quarts. That in the aggregate means that all the time you have to carry a surplus of milk, and in order to have eggs, broilers, and all these other commodities, we have to have some extra food.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, that is the one point that we have got to convince people of, that agriculture needs a certain amount of thinking and assistance in assuring that we have that sur

plus all the time. I don't care whether it is eggs or wheat or cotton or what it is.

I use the homely and personal example of the time I was in the poultry business. Twenty-five years I stayed in the poultry business and that is quite a record. I made my living and sent my children through the university, and I know that the only way that I was able to make a living in that poultry business was to always have more pullets and more birds than what I could use always. I planned on it. I planned on so many for the foxes, so many for diseases, so many for this, so many for that, so that I could wind up with a houseful of pullets. That is the only way I lived.

Frankly, I would have gone broke in a minute if I had tried to get along on half an operation for 2 or 3 years. But this is true. During the 25 years I was in the poultry business there were only about 5 of what I would call really successful years. The rest of them I had to give and take with the boys that were having a tough time. There were times when I was skating along, taking money out of my left hand pocket and putting it in my right hand pocket. There were growers who didn't have it to take out of their left hand pocket.

So my contention still is that a great deal of this so-called subsidy and assistance has got to come back to the man on the farm himself in order to balance out his products, that the Federal Government cannot guarantee him a continued profit 365 days in the year.

Expanded foreign trade, if necessary, continued support of the land-grant colleges and extension work is absolutely imperative. Continued support of research and experimental work and cooperative control programs dealing with insects and plant diseases, and expanded work in better marketing procedures.

Again let me thank the committee, and I would like to suggest that, as many of our organizations are to meet later in the year, you people designate some method to encourage the presentation of statements later, made by our commodity groups. That more or less coincides with my predecessor, Mr. Broderick's statement. I wish, Mr. Chairman, you would designate someone who would receive such decisions as are being made by our commodity groups during the next few months to trasmit to your committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask this. You are asking us to suggest someone in New England

Mr. FITTS. Not necessarily. If you would tell us today whether to channel it through Mr. Heimberger or whom to channel material of this kind to

The CHAIRMAN. We will hold our hearings open until after these meetings have been held, and whatever you may develop in the course of your meetings here that you think is worthy of our consideration in Washington, if you will send it to the committee, we will make it a part of these hearings so that when the final hearings are printed and the record is made, all of these resolutions that may develop as a result of these meetings will appear in the record as fully as if they had been presented here today. Do you think that will meet the situation?

Mr. FITTS. How about it, Mr. Broderick?

Mr. BRODERICK. That is right. I think that is wise.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you stand by for a few moments, Mr. Fitts, to see if there are any questions on the part of the committee?

Mr. FITTS. I will. And if there was time I would read this resolution which I presented to the committee, but that is up to you, Mr. Chairman. It is a 1-page affair.

it.

The CHAIRMAN. Do just as you like. Perhaps you had better read

Mr. FITTS (reading):

The New Hampshire Poultry Growers' Association, representing an industry which provides nearly 50 percent of the agricultural income of New Hampshire, urges the Congress of the United States to initiate action immediately for the repeal of mandatory 90 percent of parity farm price supports provided in the amendment to the Hope-Aiken Act of 1948.

The New Hampshire poultrymen are certain that the flexible price supports in the original Act of 1948 should be restored at the earliest date.

The 81st Congress amended the Hope-Aiken Act requiring 90 percent support on certain agricultural items until July 1, 1954.

It goes into a little more detail. [Reading:]

This compulsory program on grains (which represent about 65 percent of the cost of production of poultry meat and eggs) until the end of the next fiscal year July 1, 1954, is demoralizing to the $4 billion poultry industry of the Nation. The poultrymen of America, realizing that mandatory support programs would stimulate supplies of supported items beyond consumption, have never acted for price supports on their products and have gone on record as being opposed to them at all times. In fact, all they have sought is a realistic, flexible type of support program.

Poultry growers are in effect being penalized twice. They are taxed to enable the Government to keep feed prices at high levels. Then they are taxed again when they buy the feed at the high prices.

This may well be the last opportunity for the American poultry growers, not only to regain their initiative and voluntary participation in determining the destiny of themselves and their families, but also of survival itself.

The resolution was adopted June 24.

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you very much, Mr. Fitts. Would you mind standing by for just a few minutes here, and I will see if there are any questions.

Mr. POAGE. I would like to ask Mr. Fitts to go a little further in reconciling the viewpoint that we ought to have a floor under agricultural prices, and the opposition to the floor that we do have. As I understand it, you suggest you believe in a floor such as we have in some areas in the dairy industry where we by law prohibit the producer from selling at less than a certain price or prohibit the purchaser from buying at less than a certain price. But you feel that it is wrong to carry out the program on the basic commodities of having the Government guarantee a certain price.

That is your viewpoint, isn't it?

Mr. FITTS. More or less so, Mr. Poage. As a matter of fact, I think if we go back to my little parallel dealing with our milk control board, the difference being this: The State of New Hampshire, when our State milk control bard sets the price of milk, does not guarantee to purchase milk at that price.

Mr. POAGE. But it prohibits anybody from buying it at less?

Mr. FITTS. That is right. There is a whale of a difference. In trying to reconcile the question you are asking me, which is a very sensible one, I realize, I believe and some of my colleagues do that the Federal Government, your Congress, should provide the Secretary of Agriculture with machinery and with authority so that at the right moment he does certain things to stabilize the market. We have found good evidence of that in the egg business. We have no issue with the buying

of eggs at certain times for school-lunch programs, welfare, and what have you. Turkeys is a good example of what happened. But you did. not necessarily, and the Secretary has gone along with that, go back and tell the turkey growers, even between the lines, "Go ahead, boys,. and raise all the turkeys you want, and we will keep on buying them." That is a pretty fine line. I recognize it, and all the members of the committee, I am sure, do.

Mr. POAGE. And that is exactly the point that it seems to me you have ignored on the six basic commodities which are storable: We have always required that, as a prerequisite for receiving any kind of Government support program, the producers themselves should bear a share of the burden of that support by means of agreeing to reduce their production. We apply it primarily to the cotton, I suppose, because there has been more cotton involved than any other crop of the basic commodities, and cotton producers have never failed to vote quotas when they were proclaimed.

Tobacco has been the same way, of course, but it is a much smaller crop. On the cotton production the Government has always said, "If you, Mr. Cotton Farmer, will keep your production next year down to our estimated consumption and demand, we will buy your crop at this time, or we will lend you money on your crop to such an extent that you will not have to sell it now and take less than 90 percent of parity for it. But we will see that you are able to get 90 percent of a fair price, and we will say that you will help us get enough out of our cotton" that is the part that the Government takes-"that the Government will not lose any money."

In fact, since the program started, the Government has made $267 million off of the cotton-support program.

The thing I know that you overlooked in your presentation-I don't doubt but what you will recall it when it is brought to your mind, but I have observed that it is always overlooked by those who attack the support program on the basic commodities-is the fact that all of the basic commodities, all six of them, have never cost the United States Government one thin dime because we have come out with a net profit on handling those commodities by reason of the farmer assistance.

It therefore seems to me that possibly the American consumer and the American taxpayer are not being mulcted as severely as is indicated here when you talk about paying for your feed twice, and when we talk about what the consumer is going to get. When you apply this floor provision, you just say to the consumer, "You can't buy this for less even though the producer wants to sell it to you for less and you want to buy it for less, the Government steps in here and absolutely prohibits it." The Government applies in the United States of America the same principles that are applied in other nations across the seas of absolutely fixing prices and saying, "You can't sell for less, no matter if both parties to the transaction want to make the transaction at a lesser figure."

On the other hand, when the Government deals with the farmer on the basis that we have dealt with the six basic commodities, we say, "If you want to get a loan from your Government, you may do so provided you will help your Government see that there is no loss involved." On the six basic commodities there has been no loss. I know you can't apply those same principles to the perishable com