Total return for 1 hour human labor equals 41.7 cents.

Expense of ginning, $7 per bale, of 1.4 cents per pound.

In some sections of Texas, fertilizer is necessary and the cost averages 1 cent per pound. In my section we have to use poison to control cotton insect pests, at an average cost of 1.64 cents per pound.

Final recapitulation: From the total return of 41.7 cents we must deduct the expenses of ginning and the expenses of fertilizer and poison as follows:

Expense of ginning, $7 per bale or 1.4 cents per pound (1.94 pounds per hour times 1.4 cents) equals 2.71 cents.

Expense of poison, 1.64 cents times the amount of pounds, 1.94, equals 3.18 cents.

Or a total expense for ginning and poison in the sum of 5.89 cents, which when deducted from the total return, 41.7 cents, leaves a net return of 35.81 cents. This net return in the sum of 35.81 cents must be divided equally between the landlord and tenant, or 17.90 cents.

Thus, from the foregoing computation and formula, we find that the landlord's share of 17.90 cents and the share to the tenant or the laborer is in like sum of 17.90 cents.

I also want to especially call your attention to the unfairness of section III in the original Henderson bill, which states that no ceiling shall be placed on farm commodities at less than 110 percent of parity or the price of the commodity on July 29,1941. This gives commodities which are relatively high much of the advantage over commodities that have been ridiculously low for the past 7 or 8 years and which are still selling far below the cost of production; namely, cotton, corn, wheat, while many other commodities are now selling for approximately double that which the Department of Agriculture says is parity.

In further proof of our contentions I want to cite to you "The agriculture situation, a brief summary of economic conditions," the Department of Agriculture, which shows that parity on cotton was higher in 1937 than it is in 1941. All of you gentlemen who are familiar with the situation know that the cost of producing cotton is much higher this year, at least 30 percent higher this year than it was in 1937.

I also want to call to your attention the fact that no farmer is producing a commodity at prices the Department of Agriculture says is parity that is making any money-many of them are now losing money, others have a struggle to meet their taxes and interest and living on a very low standard-far below the average American standard of living, and the only group of farmers that is making any money is producing a commodity that is selling far above parity.

The reason so many uninformed people are hollering "wolf, wolf," about the farm commodities prices is because the farm commodities which have been selling at approximately 50 percent of what they should have been bringing before we had the war economy. Cotton is now selling at a price which should have been the minimum price for the last 8 or 10 years.

So, in fairness to our country, to the farmer, and to the small businessman who depends upon the farmer and laborers to maintain the maximum purchasing power in rural communities, I beg you, gentlemen, first to defeat the price fixing bill, and if you do not see fit to defeat it, please see that the farmers' commodities are exempted. If

that is impossible at least see that all farm commodities are treated fairly and equally with labor and industry.

I thank you for this opportunity, and assure you that at any time we can be of any assistance in the advancement of the American way of living we will be glad to do so.

The farmers of this Nation during this time of crisis will prove to be one of the most patriotic groups. They will not refuse to produce; neither will they refuse to support their Government, even though they are very much mistreated by people who have no conception of agriculture, but the farmers are looking to Congress, who are friends of agriculture, to see that they are not discriminated against by someone like Mr. Henderson who does not understand the problems of agriculture as you gentlemen do.

In 1940 net income was less than 3 percent of the national income, which was $6.32 each for the 30,000,000 people living on farms.

Senator BROWN. Congressman Bland, I understand that you want to discuss section (i) on page 8.

Representative BLAND. Yes; Mr. Chairman. That is the section on fishery products.

Senator BROWN. As I understand it, this amendment was put in on the floor upon your motion?

Representative BLAND. It was; yes. Shall I proceed?
Senator BROWN. Yes.

STATEMENT OF HON. SCHUYLER OTIS BLAND, A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA

Representative BLAND. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, fishery products should be affirmatively excluded from the operation of the price control bill, in my opinion. I submitted an amendment before the House Committee on Banking and Currency to that effect, and then another. The total amendment I will bring to the attention of the committee. Then, we submitted on the floor of the House an amendment which, if fisheries were not to be exempted, would, in my opinion and in the opinion of those who had given the matter some thought with me, provide practically the only method by which we could arrive at any reasonable effort of controlling fishery products.

I repeat; fishery products should be affirmatively excluded from the operation of the price-control law in accordance with the amendment I submitted to the House committee, which reads as followsand it will be found also in the book:

The provisions of this act shall not apply with respect to any fish, shellfish, crustacea, sponges, seaweeds, or other aquatic form of animal and vegetable life and with respect to any product, byproduct, or commodity of the fisheries.

Or, if not excluded, the House amendment should be adopted with the words "or about" inserted after the word "at", on page 8, line 5, so as to make the House amendment read as follows:

(i) No price ceiling shall be placed upon any fishery commodity below the average price of such commodity in the year 1941 nor below the average costs of production at or about the time the ceiling is set.

At the time the exclusive amendment was submitted to the House committee, I submitted to the chairman of that committee a letter which I am going to ask to have included in the hearings here. Generally speaking, that letter, favoring a total exclusion, covers the principal reasons why the exclusion should be permitted. The letter also states the exemptions that have been made in other laws or other legislation with reference to fisheries because of the peculiar circumstances of the fisheries:

First, this refers to national defense, and it is important to national defense.

Second, the inability to regulate or control those things that are at the time determined by unpredictable factors.

Senator BROWN. What standard or basis can be proposed for determining the average cost of production in the fisheries business? It seems difficult to me.

Representative BLAND. I really believe that that information is available from the former Bureau of Fisheries; the Bureau of Wildlife, I believe, is now the name of it, though I do not recall it by its new name. However, the old name was the Bureau of Fisheries. That Bureau would have in its possession data which would very aptly determine the cost of production. But that in itself is difficult, and that is one of the reasons why there should be total exclusion.

I will just call your attention to that letter I wrote to Mr. Steagall. There is no food more perishable than fish, while wide variations in supply result in gluts, causing violent fluctuations in price and taxing available facilities for handling them.

Marketable species of fish are not planted and cultivated as in the case of certain agricultural commodities.

It is obvious from the violent price fluctuations that a ceiling of prices cannot be established or maintained. As an example of price fluctuations, the price range on steak cod at Fulton Market (New York City) on October 14, 1940, ranged from 5 to 11 cents per pound and on October 29, 1940, from 8 to 14 cents per pound, according to statitics supplied by the Fish and Wildlife Service, United States Department of the Interior. Furthermore, there are more than a hundred species of marketable fish, each of which species sells at different price levels. Grades of the same species sell at different price level. The respective species and grades of the same species are placed upon the market in many forms, such as fresh whole, frozen whole, fresh fillets, frozen fillets, salted fillets, smoked fillets, salted dry, salted boneless, packaged, processed and canned in numerous forms, grades, and size of packages and cans. For each species of fish a different ceiling would be necessary and for each species several ceilings would be necessary, according to grade of the particular specie and for the various commodities as marketed.

Any price legislation would have to deal with several thousand price classifications of fishery commodities. There is attached a partial list of such classifications, numbering more than 800 which, however, does not take into consideration the fishing gear used in capture (for example, salmon caught by troll lines sell for more than those taken in gill nets)-the area in which the commodity was captured, the season of capture, the length or weight of the commodity, or its spawning condition. Moreover, the relationships between the prices of various fishery commodities varies constantly so that no single day would be representative of average relationships for any given period.

And interrupting there, that is the reason we fix the average over

1941.

A price ceiling for one or several species should not be attempted. All or none should be included. To study, classify, and attempt to fix ceilings for the thousands of fishing commodities would require thousands of employees. No specific calendar day could be used as a basis for considering prices for all fishery

commodities, because the various fishery products are produced and placed on the market throughout the calendar year and on no specified day are all of the various fishery commodities produced. They are produced at different times (seasons) during a calendar year. In short, it would be absurd to attempt to place a ceiling on fishery commodities, involving, as it would, thousands of ceilings. To investigate, fix, constantly adjust, and enforce these thousands of ceilings would require a personnel of staggering size, bearing in mind always the uncontrollable factors of weather and quantity of catch.

One of the principal things that I am most afraid of with respect to the fisheries industry is the lack of information on the industry unless you go to the Bureau of Fisheries and Wildlife to get that information. I have been studying and working on fishery problems now for about 20 years, and one of the greatest difficulties has been to get a clear comprehension in the minds of the legislators who are not dealing with fishery products as to the complex conditions and matters that are applicable.

Now, I want to submit that fishery products constitute substitutes for other foods, and the price is determined by competition with agricultural products, so that whether agricultural prices are fixed or not, there is a competitive limit. If agriculture is fixed, that in and of itself fixes a limit for fishery products. If agriculture is not fixed, then obviously no price should be fixed for the competitive article whose price is determined by competition.

Fish are sold largely at auction, and competition controls the price. That is the situation with reference to the large quantities of fish that come in from the Grand Banks.

Seventy-nine percent of the total number of vessels engaged in fishing operate on a share or lay basis, 74 percent of the total value of the catch is determined by the share or lay, and 72 percent of the total number of men engaged operate on a share or lay basis, and wages are determined in that way, so that any attempt to control the price is actually an attempt to control wages. The percentages that I have outlined of the contracts that are entered into figure in the master, the officers of the crew, and the crew themselves, and they have certain percentages of the products, of the money that is received from these sales, that determine their wages in the industry. So that the percentages that I have indicated are wage percentages.

The operation of low tariffs in a few cases and absence of any duty in most cases operate to hold prices down. It has never been possible to secure adequate tariff legislation for the fisheries.

Uncontrollable, unstable, and uncertain factors in the problem of fishery products makes price control unworkable.

Wide area and character of trade are such as to make control impracticable.

The fishery industry is essential to national defense, fishing vessels are auxiliary to the Navy and constitute important facilities for defense purposes and should be encouraged. Those factors I will later develop.

Aids extended by foreign governments to sea-food industry operate unfavorably on the American industry. There are Senate documents of studies that were made a few years ago as to the aid granted by all the nations of the world that are engaged in the fishing business. In every nation there were considerable aids, such as salt in Canada and other subsidies that are paid in Canada, and subsidies and other

things paid in other fishing nations of the world that do not apply in the United States. They may not be in operation today by reason of conditions, but that is a law and so determined, and the facts are set out in the Senate document that was published about, I think, 3 years ago.

Uncertainty of labor and instability because of better prices paid in other industries increase uncertainty of labor factors and may drive labor to other occupations.

Fishery products substitute for other foods, and though fishery prod. ucts are shown scientifically to be highly nutritive the public in the United States eat less than elsewhere. When prices get too high, the public stops buying. One illustration is salt lake herring, which in Southern markets competes with salt pork. I am informed that when the price of salt pork declines, the demand for salt herring declines, and that at no time do salt herring command a price higher than salt pork. Note also that our domestic annual consumption of meatspork, veal, beef, mutton-usually totals 140 pounds per capita, whereas the total domestic per capita consumption of fishery products totals about 14 pounds.

For many years it has been the policy of Congress to give the fishery industry exemptions in any restrictive legislation.

Fishery industries have never recovered from the depression. Efforts have been made to raise the fisheries level similar to agricultural remedies, but the factors that enter into the determination of prices are too uncertain and unstable to permit any reasonable conclusions. These are storms, climatic conditions, salinity of the water, differences in temperature, run of fish. The runs vary from year to year. No one knows when or where they are going to run or what the conditions are going to be. The application of price ceilings is wholly impracticable as the industry is constantly under the control of facts, conditions, and factors that are so variable, unpredictable, indeterminable, and uncertain that any attempt to control the industry may mean its destruction. You cannot control weather, you cannot control tides, you cannot control storms, you cannot control fogs, you cannot control the temperature or salinity of the water, you cannot control the seasons, the climate, the quantity of the catch, the time of the runs, the conditions of weather that permit or prevent prosecution of the work, and unless and until you can control such factors as these, you cannot control prices.

I bring to your attention an incident occurring in the shrimp industry in the South this summer. This spring, during the time that the run of shrimp was on, there were heavy storms, and fishermen could not go out to catch shrimp. By the time the storms were over, the run was over, and no one had an opportunity of storing any shrimp. All of the shrimp that have been available this summer are those caught in deep water. The boats fishing in this manner involve a very expensive operation, and possibly some of the shrimp on some boats that were not fortunate enough to get a quantity, would cost $1 per pound

or more.

At any rate, shrimp has been higher than at any time in the past, and probably less actual money has been made by the fishermen. If there had been a ceiling on shrimp the entire fleet would have been tied up and all of those fishermen out of work all summer for the