Now what do we propose to do? Pay the indebtedness of these groups of farmers in the distressed districts, not on a 100 per cent basis but on the actual value of these lands under these depressed conditions, which will cause the bond holders to take their losses in the transaction? In the meantime we propose to give you these lands as security for the extension of this credit by our Government. Millions of this relief money that you have been voting out of the Treasury recently, as well as millions of the money that is now being spent by the Federal Farm Board in the interest of a small per cent of farmers while millions of others in distress will not benefit under these bills, will never be repaid to the government but under our proposition the loans will be absolutely safe.

They talk about taxes. It is not Federal taxes at all. The taxes you refer to are private amounts which they have agreed to pay voluntarily for the purpose of making money.

Mr. FULMER. Not for the purpose of making money but for the purpose of making a living.

Somebody says they are not making any money, but according to my understanding the farmers went into these arrangements to make money. If they do not make money on the farm they would not have gone into it. How many farmers have you ever heard of that have ever made any great amount of money farming? They feed the rest of the country and get a living out of it.

In the last few years Congress has been going into various activities that they would not have thought of doing a few years ago. Would not this be a prudent time to relieve 5,000,000 farmers, where the Federal Government has the privilege of going into this at a time when land values are absolutely at the bottom, and figure out a loan based thereon, which, undoubtedly when land comes back, will be a very meritorious proposition. In the meantime, in paying off these bondholders at 10, 25, or 50 per cent, you are only placing them in the same class that the farmers are in to-day, and many others who are taking their losses along with the others.

I want to speak about one other angle that has not been touched on. All the drainage districts in the South were built at the expense of the labor and the money of the people of the South. In doing that, my friends, they took care of the malarial situation, which was bad. Had they not done this the Federal Government would have had to spend millions, and would to-day be spending millions to clear up the malaria situation. If you will get the facts from the Federal Public Health Service you will find that they are spending millions of dollars to-day along this line jointly with the States. I can show you letters from Doctor Cumming and from the public health service in Georgia and South Carolina, where they are doing it, and requesting more and more money.

The CHAIRMAN. They were spending their own money to clean up the local situation?"

Mr. FULMER. Yes. When they built the drainage districts.

The CHAIRMAN. Because it was advantageous to improve the health conditions?

Mr. FULMER. That is not the main purpose; they brought into existence some of the best farm land in the country. They cleared

up the malaria situation that undoubtedly would have to have been cleared up by the Federal Government for the welfare of the country. Mr. FORT. Then by establishing a drainage district they largely increased the value of their own land.

Mr. FULMER. They did that, and also cleared up this situation. I want to quote from a report of Mr. Arthur P. Miller, associate sanitary engineer of the United States Public Health Service in Washington. In 1925, referring to Orangeburg County, for 6 months, June to November, we had 600 cases of malaria; and in 1927, 873 cases; and in 1929, 1,522 cases.

Now, to show you the effect, or the progress of this malaria situation in counties and in sections where we have drainage districts over the rest of the State, in 1925 malaria cases rates per thousand population in the State of Carolina was 7.09, and in Orangeburg County it was 8.65. In 1927 it was 9.35 in the State, and in Orangeburg County in 1927 it was 12.26. In 1929 in the State it was 11.70 and in Orangeburg County it was 20.84.

is?

Mr. O'CONNOR. Orangeburg County is where the drainage district

Mr. FULMER. That is the district I am speaking of.

Mr. O'CONNOR. That is increasing rather than decreasing.
Mr. FULLMER. That is what I want to say.

Mr. O'CONNOR. It is getting worse.

Mr. FULMER. I want to say unless you bring some relief which will relieve agriculture, as well as this situation, you are going to spend millions of dollars to take care of this proposition in the South. To show you the difference between counties where we have dainage districts and the other parts of the State, I will give you some more figures. In 1929 Greenville, in the Piedmont section. there were 85 cases and 1 death. In Orangeburg County drainage district, there were 1,792 cases and 68 deaths.

If I had these cuts contained in this report in larger pictures you might see the situation that is brought about because they have not the funds to dredge these canals and open these lateral ditches and take care of the flooding of these lands which is bringing about this malarial condition. You can readily see [indicating with pictures] why it is that these farmers are unable to take care of the situation when you see the flooded waters and what happened especially as the result of the storm in 1928 in the Southeast.

There is one other thing that I would like to mention. The gentleman from New York, Mr. O'Connor, referred to certain city districts, as to the bad financial conditions.

I want to say, my friends, that during the war and just after the war agriculture was prosperous and your people were prosperous, and before your people will again become prosperous you are going to have to make agriculture prosperous; you are going to have to restore the purchasing power of the people, and this is one of the ways in which you can do it; you can relieve about 5,000,000 farmers, which will actually bring prosperity to the cities and to the unemployed and to the wage earners.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, in view of the number of Members who have requested time, we will limit the time of each Member from now on to three minutes.

The CHAIRMAN. We must close in 20 minutes. We have listened to you very patiently.

Mr. SMITH. I was under the impression that you would run until 12 o'clock.

The CHAIRMAN. It is necessary to adjourn a few minutes before 12 o'clock to-day.

Mr. SMITH. We will only have two or three more speakers. We will now ask Mr. Colton, of Utah, to make a statement to the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be glad to hear Mr. Colton at this time. STATEMENT OF HON. DON B. COLTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH

Mr. COLTON. Mr. Chairman, I presume this committee would be interested in knowing whether there is a precedent for this legislation. There is a precedent. It is just the converse of the reclamation idea. We started out with the desert-land entries in arid regions. Then there was the authorization by what is known as the Carey Act under which the State undertook to reclaim lands, and finally, in 1902, the reclamation act was passed. The Government has helped, the precedent is established. If reclamation has been a benefit, and it has, then it follows that drainage is also a benefit.

Now, just a word with reference to the soundness of the investment. The experience of the Reclamation Service has been extremely valuable to the Government. They have found that the greatest problem of reclamation projects has been the human problem. When they could get a class of settlers who would stay there and work the thing out, it became a safe investment. The human problem is solved on drainage areas, so it is a sound investment. Some of the best people in the world are living on these areas. The Secretary of the Interior, following his present policy, is making sound investments in the Reclamation Service, and I feel sure he will in the drainage areas. These are to be loans, amply secured, and will be repaid.

In my own section drainage was undertaken with the idea of raising sugar beets, and the price of sugar beets has gone so low that the company that built the factory has removed it. The people will have to turn to some other useful products, such as raising alfalfa and dairy products. If they are given a little cheaper money they can make a success of a project that will otherwise be a failure. Some relief is absolutely necessary or many people in Millard County, Utah, will be ruined.

I simply wanted to make three points-that there is a precedent for this legislation, it is a sound investment, and the Government funds are being and will be protected, and there is a real opportunity now to help the farmer. It will help the farmer by saving the homes of men and women on the farm who have already shown their ability to succeed if given a chance.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Butler desires to make a short statement.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be glad to hear Mr. Butler's statement.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT R. BUTLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

Mr. BUTLER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make a statement for my colleague, Mr. Hawley, who is unable to be here this morning. He desired that I state to the committee for the record that he was unable to be here because of other duties but desired the record to show he was heartily in favor of this proposed legislation.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, in view of the limited time we will only have one more speaker, and I would like the committee now to hear Mr. Short.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be glad to hear Mr. Short at this time. STATEMENT OF HON. DEWEY SHORT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

Mr. SHORT. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the entire Missouri delegation in Congress, our two Senators as well as the 16 Representatives, are wholeheartedly and unreservedly in favor of the passage of this bill.

The drainage districts and irrigation districts are so largely scattered that the problem is not a local one, but it is national in scope. There are over a million acres in the drainage lands in the State tof Missouri, and four-fifths of that total is located in southeastern Missouri, in the eight alluvial counties of the Mississippi Valley, most of which are in my district.

Two hundred and thirty thousand of the three hundred and fifty thousand people whom I have the honor to represent are directly and vitally affected by this bill. It is unnecessary, therefore, for me to state that it is a matter of life and death to my people.

When I was born, only 32 years ago, southeast Missouri was an impenetrable swamp, but at the beginning of the present century there were numbers of heroic men and women, pioneers, who came out of the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee, southern Indiana, and southern Illinois and went into southeast Missouri, and through courage, sacrifice, patience, and perseverance they turned that miasmic disease-infected swamp into a healthy, prosperous country.

I do not care where you go-whether you go down the Nile into Egypt, whether you go along the Ganges in India, or whether you go up the Yangtze River in China-wherever you may go you will never find anywhere, in any part of the world, any territory anywhere under the shining sun that is more fertile than that in southeast Missouri.

There are 112 drainage districts in my district, where they have dug over 3,000 miles of canals, having removed more dirt than was removed in the excavation of the Panama Canal.

The first ditch was dug in 1903, and from 1903 to 1925 my people were in a more or less prosperous condition in spite of the occasional calamities which confronted them.

They financed bonds to the extent of $53,000,000, drainage bonds, counting the interest on those bonds.

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In addition to that drainage indebtedness, my people, it is conservatively estimated. have spent $75,000,000 in clearing their land, in building fences, and improving their farms.

So my constituents have really expended $128,000,000 in reclaiming that land which was at the beginning not only worthless, but which was a barrier to the transportation of commodities and in the communication of the ideas of the citizenry who lived in that

area.

It was also a menace to the public health and safety. According to the report of the State health commissioner, Dr. James Stewart, of Jefferson City, from 1917 to 1927 the death rate in Missouri from malaria, dysentery, diarrhea, and kindred maladies has been reduced 75 per cent.

From 1903 to 1925 my people paid off over $20.000.000 of these drainage bonds, reducing their bonded indebtedness from $53,000.000 to approximately $33,000,000.

In 1925 we were only $70,000 in arrears on meeting our maturing obligations, which tends to show that under normal conditions. being given a fair chance, this country can pay this charge.

Mr. Chairman, broad national policies are not to be governed or determined wholly upon the basis of sympathy. Personally I think careless and indiscriminate giving is nothing more than a sentimental, silly philanthrophy, which is conducive to the perpetuation of poverty and indolence.

But there are certain humanitarian principles and aspects of this problem that can not be ignored.

Here we find men and women who have invested their life earnings and their life energies in reclaiming a rich section of the country. They have met their obligations, save only at the time of such catastrophes over which no human being had any control, such as the great flood of 1927 that took away our last insurance and ioan companies from southeast Missouri.

Charleston, the home of the former Representative in Congress from my district, Hon. Joseph J. Russell, was at one time a thriving, prosperous city. Aristocracy, knowledge, and character dwelt there. There were 10 banks in the county; to-day there is but one. They have retained one at Charleston, with practically no capital, only for accommodation.

Within the past year I have had 22 bank failures in my district, and, whereas 10 years ago there was practically no delinquency in the payment of taxes, over 80 per cent of the land in my district now in this drainage area is delinquent. Their credit is gone; they are bankrupt; the people are really suffering, going hungry at this present hour.

Now, then, Mr. Chairman, the question is whether or not we are going to sit idly by, whether we shall place 5,000,000 distressed farmers in a peculiar class to bear not only the expense of taxation that farmers everywhere should bear, but in addition pay these obligations of drainage taxes.

The CHAIRMAN. Will the gentlemen yield?

Mr. SHORT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Each one of the gentlemen this morning has said that we are going to relieve 5,000,000 distressed farmers. According to the evidence here there are only about 5,000,000 on the entire