or another. For instance, a tenant may be on one landlord one year and on another another year, and in the end society has to pay the cost of these inefficient farmers.

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE WESTBROOK, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR OF THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION, IN CHARGE OF RURAL REHABILITATION

Senator BANKHEAD. We will be glad to have a statement from you. You know the purpose of this bill, Mr. Westbrook?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes, sir. I assume that the relief aspects of the situation would be most interesting to you coming from me.

Senator BANKHEAD. We will be glad to have information on your rehabilitation work.

Mr. WESTBROOK. That, of course, is a part of it.

Senator BANKHEAD. Just proceed your own way. You know what we are driving at.

Mr. WESTBROOK. I think, Senator, it might be desirable first to give you some statistics in regard to the relief situation among tenant farmers and owners and share croppers. We have made some very careful studies in various parts of the United States. To begin with, we have about 800,000 farmers who are now on relief. Roughly, those farmers are divided in this way: 300,000 in the South, 300,000 in the drought area, and 200,000 scattered generally throughout the country. In these problem areas, where we have made detailed studies, we have the percentages of people who are in relief and their classification. In the Appalachian and Ozark area, out of 354,244 owners and managers, 9 percent were on relief; out of 103,855 tenants and 34,984 croppers, 38 percent were on relief. In the Lake States, out of 83,000 owners and managers, 22 percent were on relief, and out of the 10,308 tenants, 49 percent were on relief.

Senator POPE. Does that include the drought area?

Mr. WESTBROOK. No; that is not the drought area. This is the drought area, the short-grass spring-wheat area. We have divided the drought area into two sections. Out of 75,477 owners and managers, 22 percent were on relief; and out of 31,044 tenants, 63 percent were on relief. In the short-grass winter-wheat area, out of 57,323 owners and managers, 8 percent were on relief; and out of 45,026 tenants, 23 percent were on relief.

In the western cotton area, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, out of 145,695 owners and managers, 10 percent were on relief. Out of 178,232 tenants, 23 percent were on relief. We ran the tenants and croppers together there. That is white people.

In the cotton area, we divided it between the Negroes and Whites. As to the Negroes, the same percentage of Negro owners and managers were on relief as white owners and managers. The same percentage prevailed all the way through. There was almost no difference between the percentage of Negroes and white owners on relief.

Senator BANKHEAD. What was the percentage?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Twenty-three percent for tenants and croppers. In the eastern cotton area, east of the Mississippi River, out of 345,380 owners and managers, 6 percent were on relief; and on the

tenants, 241,000 plus tenants and 189,000 plus croppers, only 10 percent were on relief. The difference was that they had a good crop east of the river this year.

You asked a good many questions about that, and I thought you would be glad to have the information.

Senator POPE. We are.

Mr. WESTBROOK. This information may also be valuable to the committee. These figures here give the gain for workers in specified occupations and the percentage of them that we have classified as stranded. In the South, out of 5,583,000 workers, 56 percent of them were owners, managers, and tenants; 21 percent were wage earners, laborers; 1,266,514 were classified as unpaid family workers. We have in the South 23 percent of those people, all those people, on relief.

In the remainder of the United States, out of 4,899,000 workers, with 60 percent of them being owners, managers, and tenants, and 32 percent of them being wage earners, we have only 8 percent that are on relief.

This is relief among farmers in the cotton areas. These figures show that in the western cotton area, that I pointed out a minute ago, 10 percent of the owners and managers were on relief, and 23 percent of the tenants and croppers.

Senator BANKHEAD. Does that include the drought area in the western section?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes, it does. If it were not for the drought, it would probably be the same as the eastern section. I don't think there would be much difference otherwise. The drought was the cause of that.

Senator BANKHEAD. That is about as low a percentage as you have anywhere in the country, isn't it?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes. I will show you that right here. In the farming sections of the country, the farm population is not a relief problem. In Alabama, your State, Senator, there are five counties having a population of 768,000, the metropolitan counties, and there are only 12 percent of that number that live on the farms. The relief load in those five counties is 27 percent of the total population. You get down here to 41 counties, where approximately 75 percent of the people who live in those 41 counties live on farms, and your relief load is 4.2 percent. That is true throughout the country, except in the drought areas. When you get into the drought areas it is reversed. The people who live in the country in the drought areas, a much greater percentage of them are on relief than those who live in the towns in the drought areas.

Senator BANKHEAD. It shows to my mind, Mr. Westbrook, that a man on a little farm can at least make a subsistence living. Mr. WESTBROOK. He is not on relief if he is on the farm. Senator BANKHEAD. He can dig it out himself.

Senator POPE., What do the figures show out in the intermountain section. including my State, Idaho?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I don't believe I have Idaho here. I will see. I am sorry I don't have it. However, the relief percentage in the country in Idaho is comparatively low too. I know that, but I don't have the exact figures..

It probably is also of interest to the committee to know how these people that we have been taking off of relief and getting into rural rehabilitation have come out. That, I think, is a measure of their ability to make good as farmers.

Senator BANKHEAD. Yes; I am particularly interested in that subject.

Mr. WESTBROOK. We now have about 150,000 farmers who were previously on relief, and who are now enrolled in the rural rehabilitation program.

Senator BANKHEAD. Let me ask you: What proportion-if you have the figures-of those people were on farms up to the time you took them over, and what proportion came out of towns

Mr. WESTBROOK. For practical purposes they all came from the farms. We approached this situation on this basis, that these people were now on relief, and it was costing the Government anywhere from $10 to $30 per month per family on direct and work relief, and we concluded that if we could get them a little piece of land, lease them a little piece of land, or make arrangements for them to lease it, and supply them with necessary farming equipment, we could get them off of relief either wholly or in part and cut down the expense. That has worked out. These people, a large number of them, have completely paid back everything that they have gotten from us in this rural rehabilitation program. The program was started last March which, of course, was too late to take advantage of last season's crop, but we have progressively added relief people to the program until now there are about 150,000. Those who were on as late as April of last year, a large number of them, in your State particularly, Senator Bankhead, have paid every cent back that was advanced to them. We don't have any relief load there.

Senator BANKHEAD. You have got no farmers on relief in Alabama now?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Four and two-tenths percent. If you didn't have a relief administration there, you wouldn't know it.

Senator POPE. The farms to which they have been moved are generally small?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes. We don't fully equip them. We can't fully equip them. We don't have enough money to equip them to handle anything but very small acreage, probably not enough to set them up, economically speaking, but we have sought to do this on the basis that if we didn't spend our money to help these people get off relief, it would cost us more before a very long time elapsed. We have acted as a cushion. We have furnished credit to people that the Farm Credit Administration and private bank could not furnish credit to. We have provided that cushion of credit that made them eligible for credit from these other sources, and that has been a great deal of benefit to these people. Possibly a man would be eligible for a credit from the Farm Credit Administration if he had a mule. They are not going to lend him any money if he doesn't have a mule, because he can't work a crop, but he had no basis of credit upon which to approach the Farm Credit Administration because he did not have the equipment, so we provided him with the equipment. Then he is eligible for a loan from the Farm Credit Administration, so that he can make his crop.

Senator BANKHEAD. You have been furnishing them, largely, steers haven't you?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes; a good many. We were able in your State, Senator, to take care of 23,000 farm families because we spread it out pretty thin. I think in Alabama the cost to the Government has been less than a hundred dollars per family. They own now what we furnished them, and a good many of them, as I say, have paid us back, and besides they own what we furnished them.

We have also furnished mules. As they develop and look like they can pay for it, we have provided them with a mule.

Senator POPE. This is a very general question. Can you say offhand how your relief rolls compare now with the number on relief a year ago?

Mr. WESTBROOK. They are a good deal higher I think. Of course we had the Civil Works tapering off at this time a year ago, but the relief rolls are higher now. I don't know the exact figure, but they are considerably higher.

Senator BANKHEAD. You mean the whole relief rolls?
Mr. WESTBROOK. The whole country.

Senator BANKHEAD, Industrial and all?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Of course, there are a great many more farmers on relief than there were a year ago principally on account of the drought. We had the drought then, but we are just feeling the effects of the drought in some places.

Senator POPE. In other farm sections than the drought sections, how do the relief rolls compare now with a year ago?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Take North Carolina, it is rather disturbing that the relief load is considerably higher than it was a year ago, although their agricultural income was much greater.

Senator POPE. How do you account for that?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I think it is these people who just simply have exhausted their resources and are not able to take care of themselves any longer, very largely.

Senator BANKHEAD. You are not referring particularly now to the farm-relief rolls?

Mr. WESTBROOK. No; but most of it is the farmer. I will tell you how it happened. They are not on relief in the country, but they go into town and are on relief in town. That is one explanation of these figures here.

Senator BANKHEAD. They go into town and get on relief?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes. It is impossible to keep them out; you can't keep them out of town. The police can't keep them out.

Senator POPE. Mr. Hopkins made a statement in the public press the other day, or it was reported that he made this statement, that he thought some people were getting the habit of being on relief.

Mr. WESTBROOK. Unquestionably. They are not only getting the habit, but they are learning the technique. There is no question but that is true. We know that we have to extend relief to people who have no chance of getting a job. Now as long as we have to extend relief in Montgomery, the people who are not satisfied out in the country are going to come to Montgomery, and they can't keep them out of Montgomery. They are there, and they are utterly without any resources at all.

Senator POPE. Do you find in some cases that people who have struggled along and scratched out a living of a sort on the farm have given up the task and have come in on relief?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I don't quite get that.

Senator POPE. Are there farmers who have been struggling along and just barely getting along for perhaps years who have given up the fight on the farm and have come into towns and gone on relief? Mr. WESTBROOK. Oh, yes. I will say that the farmer is the most reluctant class of our entire citizenship to go on relief. He resists it more than any other class of our citizenship.

Senator POPE. I am glad to hear that.

Senator BANKHEAD. Is there any difference in the attitude between the farm owners and the tenants?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes; I think the owners have more resistance than the tenants.

I think we can't solve this question except by some device such as provided for in this bill here of Senator Bankhead's. We are going to have to continue to extend relief to people who have no resources; we all know that. Well, they can't go back to the country. There isn't any place for these people back in the country now, and they don't go there. They stay in town.

Senator BANKHEAD. Do you think many of them would like to go back if they had a little farm?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I know they would; I know they would. There is no question about it.

Senator POPE. Probably most of them?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes; they recognize that the farm furnishes security; and that is the thing that people are more interested in now than anything else-security.

Senator BANKHEAD. Broadly speaking, you think the objectives of this bill are good?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I would go so far as to say that the things that are made possible in this bill are absolutely essential.

Senator BANKHEAD. Are you familiar with the project in Jackson County, Ala.-that colonization project? Please give us information about it.

Mr. WESTBROOK. The Alabama Relief Administration, operating through the Rural Rehabilitation Corporation, which we have in all these States-we have to have it to do the business-they have bought, I think, or contracted to buy there, some 8,000 acres of land. They are using work-relief labor, people they have to feed anyhow, to improve that land and build houses and barns on it and get it in shape for occupancy. A good many of the people who are working on the land will live on it after this work is done. The idea is that that 8,000 acres will take care of around 200 families. We are doing a good deal of that throughout the whole country. Senator POPE. How is that working out?

Mr. WESTBROOK. It is working out fine. You see, a farmer doesn't actually get paid for building his own house; but if we were not paying him when he was building his own house, we would have to be paying him for something else, so he gets an equity in this property while he is doing that.

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