tenants in 1930, 31.7 per cent; in 1920, 24.7 per cent; in 1910, 21 per cent; in 1900, 17.3 per cent.

Do you want the value of the farms?

Senator MCGILL. No. That will be in your statement.

Senator FRAZIER. Have you any other statement, Mr. Erp?

Mr. TALBOTT. Just a word there in answer to Senator McGill. Mr. Erp does not claim to have the only organized farmers in the State. There is a farm bureau there, very strongly organized. Senator MCGILL. I understand. He is representing the Farmers Union.

Mr. TALBOTT. They are behind this bill, too, by resolution.
Senator MCGILL. You mean the Farm Bureau?

Mr. TALBOTT. Yes.

Senator HATFIELD. How many members do you have in the farm organizations?

Mr. TALBOTT. I should say between 40,000 and 50,000 in the two farm organizations in Minnesota.

Senator MCGILL. The various farm organizations?

Mr. TALBOTT. Yes.

Senator FRAZIER. Are there any other questions to ask Mr. Erp? (No response.)

We have two more States represented here, that have not been heard, and perhaps one or two others that want to be heard. We will have to have a meeting this afternoon. We want to complete the hearings this afternoon, if possible. What time will be convenient? Will 2.30 be a convenient hour?

Mr. EVERSON. I had some data that I overlooked. If it is permissible, I would like to read it to the committee. These datas pertain to South Dakota. They are obtained upon good authority. This is for Lake County, S. Dak., and that is one of our good counties. The abstractors and the register of deeds have compiled some data, which I would like to have inserted in the record.

(The above estimate does not include city or village lots.)

There is one thing in particular that I wanted to bring out here, and that is that they have advertised delinquent tax sales on 820 quarter sections of this land this year. That is an increase of 85 per cent over the years 1929 and 1930.

Senator McGILL. That is in the State?

Mr. EVERSON. In the county.

Senator MCGILL. In the one county?
Mr. EVERSON. Yes.

Mr. SIMPSON. Probably the very best farm land in the State. Mr. EVERSON. It is very good land. It is one of the good counties in the State.

(Whereupon, at 12.30 o'clock p. m., the subcommittee recessed until 2.30 o'clock p. m.)

AFTER RECESS

Pursuant to the expiration of the noon recess, the committee resumed the hearing at 2.30 o'clock p. m.

Senator FRAZIER (presiding). The hearing will come to order. Mr. Simpson, who is your next witness?

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. C. N. Rogers, of Iowa.

Senator FRAZIER. Mr. Rogers.

STATEMENT OF C. N. ROGERS, DES MOINES, IOWA

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I would like to appear before this committee as an average Iowa farmer, because I believe that most of the farmers in my State are very nearly in my position. I am here as a farmer representing as best I can the farmers of my State to plead with you to use your influence in getting some kind of legislation passed to help to keep the farmers of my State from losing their homes.

I have been a farmer for a good many years. In fact, I have never moved in my life until recently, having owned and operated farms in my State for many years. If the present condition is allowed to continue the farms which I and my family have worked all of our lives to obtain will not be worth the paper on which the deed is written in a short time. The farms of my State are fast drifting out of the hands of the individual farmers into the hands of groups, making a tenant or hired man out of the farmer. If you will come with me into my State I will show you corporations ranging in size from a few hundred acres to as high as 16 sections, and not a single farm home left in those 16 sections of the best farming land in the United States.

The prices we have been forced to take since 1920 have gradually forced the standard of living lower and lower for the American farmer, and the price he has been forced to take in the last year or two is fast forcing him to become a tenant or hired man. We farmers felt that when the national marketing act was passed that we would get some relief, but as it has been administered it has failed as far as we are concerned, and the farmers to-day are looking to their Senators and Representatives to see that there is legislation passed that will help save and maintain the farm home as a unit. The farmer feels that his representative, with all the information at his fingers'

tips, knows of his condition, and therefore is not bothering him with letters.

Prices the farmers of Iowa received for their products in 1931 are about as follows:

And I might say to you that these prices apply to my territory, in one of the best sections of Iowa.

Senator FRAZIER. What part of the State do you live in?

Mr. ROGERS. In the southwest part.

Wheat sold at threshing time at 30 cents; corn at 25; oats at 15; hogs the past winter from two to four dollars per 100; cattle from three to six dollars per hundred unless the farmer had cattle that had been on feed for a period of 10 to 12 months.

It is costing the farmers of Iowa about as much to produce now as it did five years ago because the items that enter into the cost of production are about the same as they were five years ago. The farmers of Iowa, the greatest agricultural State in the Union, are fast losing their homes. Let me stop right here and ask you, members of this committee, if you fully realize what it means for a family to lose its home for which they have labored most of their lives to obtain. Again let me call your attention to the fact that the farmers are fast losing their homes, as the farm owners have decreased from 129,000 in 1900 to 102,000 in 1930. I might say we have 214,000 farms in Iowa. In other words, there have been 27,000 farmers in Iowa who have lost their homes during that period, and there are additional ones who will have lost their homes during 1931 and 1932. I am asking you again to place yourself in one of these farmer's places and, after being made the promises which were made to the farmers by the politicians in 1928-and I have reference to both parties just how would you feel if in 1931 and 1932 your Congressman refused to make good the party's pledge?

Iowa is perhaps the hardest hit because it is the greatest producing State in the Union. There is to-day over $450,000,000 of mortgage indebtedness on the Iowa farms, and there is no place for the farmer to go to renew these loans as they need to do.

I might say here that the farmers in Iowa who have farm mortgages coming due that have got to be paid have no place to go to get the money to renew those loans. On one farm I had a small mortgage coming due near the 1st. I tried loan companies, insurance companies, and the Federal land bank, and while it was only a $2,000 mortgage against 140 acres of land, it was impossible for me to borrow that amount of money. And there are thousands of farmers in Iowa that are in the same position. The Frazier bill, we believe, will relieve the situation.

I would like to read into the record a statement put out by a group of economists a few days ago in a resolution sent to President Hoover. A group of well-known economists, meeting in Chicago recently, adopted and transmitted to President Hoover resolutions urging the following measures to combat the current depression.

1. A much freer use of the facilities of the Federal reserve system.. 2. Continuance of Government-construction expenditures at a high level.

3. Reduction or cancellation of intergovernmental obligations. 4. Lowering of tariffs.

In discussing the Federal reserve banks, the economists said:

We recommend that the Federal reserve banks give a substantial preference in discount rates to commercial paper eligible as cover for Federal reserve notes. We recommend, further, that the Federal reserve act be amended to empower the Federal Reserve Board, during the present emergency, to permit in its discretion the use of Federal Government securities on equal terms with commercial paper as cover for Federal reserve notes.

We recommend these measures as effective means of increasing the free gold of the Federal reserve system and as constituting, therefore, an important defense against the consequences of gold withdrawals. We regard these measures as necessary prerequisites to the following recommendation with respect to open-market operations.

We recommend that the Federal reserve banks systematically pursue openmarket operations with the double aim of facilitating necessary Government financing and increasing the liquidity of the banking structure.

This last recommendation would have the reserve banks purchase Government securities in increased quantities, thus increasing currency in circulation and easing credit generally, while directly assisting the Government financing.

The remainder of communication to the President was:

We urge that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation vigorously and courageously carry out those provisions of the act which authorize it to give aid to banks by making loans on assets not eligible for rediscount with the Federal reserve banks.

We recommend that the Federal Government maintain its program of public works and public services at a level not lower than that of 1930-31 in order not to counteract the effects of previous recommendations. We believe that some measure of financial cooperation of the Federal Government with State and local governments is indispensable to the maintenance of adequate unemployment relief.

We strongly recommend the reduction or cancellation of intergovernmental debts as an essential step toward recovery of world industry and trade, and we regard such a recovery as an important contribution to the restoration of our own prosperity. We call attention to the fact that the intergovernmental debts, while nominally unchanged since the debt settlements, have increased in real burden as a result of the fall in prices, thus impairing the capacity to pay under normal conditions.

The signers were Irving Fisher of Yale University; Charles O. Hardy and Harold G. Moulton, of Brookings Institute; Alvin H. Hanson, of the University of Minnesota; John H. Williams, of Harvard University; Ivan Wright, of the University of Illinois; Max Handman, of the University of Michigan; Charles S. Tippetts, of the University of Buffalo; Arthur W. Marget, of the University of Minnesota; Ernest M. Patterson, of the University of Pennsylvania; and the following of the University of Chicago: Henry Schultz, Jacob Viner, Garfield V. Cox, Frank H. Knight, John H. Cover, Lloyd W. Mints, Chester W. Wright, Harry D. Gideonse, Theodore O. Ynaema, and Harry A. Millis.

There are two paragraphs here that I would like to comment on. One is the paragraph where they urge the Reconstruction Finance Corporation vigorously and courageously to carry out those provisions of the act which authorize it to give aid to banks by making loans on assets not eligible for rediscount with Federal reserve banks. I have talked to some bankers in the city of Des Moines, the capital of my State, in regard to what paper was eligible to rediscount through the Federal reserve. They tell me that notes secured by mortgages being placed up as collateral, no matter how good the mortgages are nor how big they are, those notes can not be redis

counted with the Federal reserve. If you have bonds or other commercial paper you can go borrow money by putting those securities up as a collateral. The farm mortgages that are in the country to-day are not eligible as security on notes that can be rediscounted. Senator FRAZIER. In other words, the farmers at the present time have mighty little credit?

Mr. ROGERS. There is a very small percentage of the farmers to-day that have any credit, unless you are borrowing money to finance your feeding operations by giving a mortgage on cattle or sheep or the feed that goes into them. You can borrow money on that kind of security.

A banker told me in Des Moines the other day that if a farmer came into his place that owned 200 acres of land free of indebtedness, and wanted to borrow a thousand dollars to build a barn on that 200 acres, he could not loan it to him. If he wanted to borrow a thousand dollars to buy feeding cattle with, he could loan it to him, even though he might have a mortgage of $20,000 against the 200 acres. Because the feeding cattle would be put up as security. All he would have back of the thousand-dollar note that he would loan the man to build a new barn with would be the note secured by the 200 acres of land owned by the farmer free of indebtedness. That is how much credit the farmers in the State of Iowa have.

Now, these economists, in this resolution sent to President Hoover, are asking for an inflation of the currency. They are not asking a great deal more in this resolution than the farmers are asking in the bills that we are asking to be made into laws. They are asking that the intergovernmental debts be either canceled or reduced, saying that the present condition is making it impossible for the debtor to pay. The same condition exists in the United States as far as the farmer is concerned to-day that exists in the foreign countries that owe these debts. The farmer, as well as the business man in Iowa, and I think the same would apply to every other State in the Middle West, has got to the place where it is impossible for him to pay, until there is an inflation of the currency.

My people in my State-and we naturally think that we have as good a class of people and as intelligent a class of people on the farms in the State of Iowa as there is anywhere in the Union-it has always been a very conservative State, but it is fast becoming one of the most radical States of the Union, and will be one of the most radical States of the Union unless something is done within the next year or two to change the condition.

Senator FRAZIER. Are your farmers like the Wisconsin farmers, beginning to see red?

Mr. BRYANT of Oklahoma. I would like to ask this question: Do you mean by intergovernmental debts, war-reparation debts? Mr. ROGERS. Yes.

Mr. BRYANT. Your group is in favor of cancellation?

Mr. ROGERS. No. That was in the resolutions passed by these economists that were sent to President Hoover.

Mr. SIMPSON. There were not any farmers in it.

Mr. ROGERS. No; there were not any farmers in it; it was not a farmers' resolution.

Mr. YOUNG. I want to say to Mr. Rogers that if the farmers are not seeing red now it will not take a very long time to begin seeing it.