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We have got to get the consent of foreign governments to do that. We have got to make some trade or some deal with them. We have got to make it a profitable thing for them from their viewpoint as well as from ours in order to bring it about.

Mr. Woods. I am no lawyer, but I am told that it is not a treaty point; that it is a question of dumping. I think some automatic machinery could be set up, quite without the aid of treaties, some reciprocal tariff or something of that sort that would do the thing immediately, if it is politic and in consonance with whatever informal engagements we have.

Senator NORRIS. For the sake of argument, let us just admit that it could be done-I doubt very much if it could, but it would be a good thing if we could do it, I concede that, but if you had all that accomplished would that give the farmer cost of production and a living profit on what he produces?

Mr. Woods. If you got much stimulus in the foreign market it would. It would not take much now in the livestock and meat industry to swing this thing. We are different from the other industries in that particular, that only a small percentage is involved.

Senator NORRIS. At best we do not know how we are going to come out on that. We do not know whether we can accomplish anything. Mr. WOODS. We are not sure of it, no.

Senator NORRIS. Should we wait now and not do anything, and see whether we can afterward work that out?

Mr. Woods. I would try to do this.

Senator NORRIS. That we are doing?

Mr. WOODS. No.

Senator WHEELER. Let me ask you a question, if it will not interrupt you. You say that if the farmer could get cost of production you would be glad to see it?

Mr. WOODS. Yes.

Senator WHEELER. You think that this bill will not do it?

Mr. WOODS. Will not get the cost?

Senator WHEELER. Will not get the price up to the farmer.

Mr. Woods. That is, get his aggregate return up? Yes, I think it would not.

Senator WHEELER. You think it would not?

Mr. Woods. Yes, sir.

Senator WHEELER. Of course, I think that is the thing that we ought to be concerned in, as to whether or not this bill will raise the price of farm commodities.

Senator MURPHY. Was the answer in the negative?

Mr. WOODS. I said I did not think it would raise the farmers' total return.

Senator WHEELER. You say that you think you could get the price up by selling part of this surplus that we have got abroad? Is that it?

Mr. WOODS. At a better figure. Senator WHEELER. At a better figure? Well, if you could do that, you think that would put the price up so that the farmer could get cost of production in this country?

Mr. Woods. I do not know what the cost of production is, but my impression is that if you could do that in any satisfactory way, as your question implies, except as we are touched by the general business

situation, that probably our livestock producers' troubles would be greatly reduced.

Senator WHEELER. No matter how you got it up, the contention is here that if you got it up the consumer could not pay the price. Mr. WOODS. Right.

Senator WHEELER. And now, you are saying in one breath that you feel that the price ought to come up, and no matter how you get the price up, the consumer is going to pay it?

Mr. WOODS. Yes; indeed.

Senator WHEELER. He is going to pay it, whether you put a tax on him or whether you get it up by selling in foreign countries.

Mr. WOODS. Yes, sir.

Senator WHEELER. What we are concerned with, it seems to me, and the only thing this committee should be concerned with is, Can we get the price up to the farmer? And you will agree that if you can get the price up to the farmer, it gives him greater purchasing power and then he will be able to buy manufactured articles?

Mr. Woods. If you can get his total return up; yes.

Senator WHEELER. Of course, and if you can get the price of his commodities up you will get the total return up? Mr. Woods. Not necessarily.

Senator WHEELER. Why not?

Mr. WOODS. For the reason that the consumer will not take the same supply at an artificially higher price. We could take a dozen hogs here, if that was the total supply, and sell them for any amount of money, but we can not take the same supply and get more for the meat, or we would have done it long ago and shown some profit.

Senator WHEELER. As a matter of fact, you have not got an overproduction of meat in this country at the present time, have you? Mr. WOODS. Not in the sense of having more than the people can eat, if they could buy it.

Senator FRAZIER. There is no surplus at all in beef or mutton.
Mr. WOODS. No; not even of pork if the people could buy it.

Senator FRAZIER. What is the use of talking about a surplus of pork when you have got the same conditions there that you have in mutton and cattle? You have no surplus of those, and the price is down so low that the farmers are not getting anything for it.

Mr. WOODS. Exactly.

Senator FRAZIER. Then you talk about taking care of a little surplus abroad, that that would solve the situation. That is all bunk. Mr. WOODS. Well, I cannot agree with you there, Senator. Senator FRAZIER. How about beef and sheep?

Mr. WOODS. Well, I would say that the beef situation is about like this: That at present levels many producers are losing money, a number are breaking even, and some, very few, are making money.

Senator FRAZIER. They are mighty few, so far as I know. My renter had some good steers, thousand pound steers, and he was offered 2 cents a pound on the local market for them, fat steers, stall fed. Do you think he can make money at that price? If you do, you have got another guess coming.

Mr. Woods. No; I agree with you he cannot.

Senator FRAZIER. It is not because there is a surplus of beef either. Mr. Woods. As more than can be sold at prices that will give him a profit, though, Senator.

Senator WHEELER. And you have got other farm products besides sheep and cattle of which there is no surplus, and on which you have got a high tariff preventing any importation, and yet those products are down to perhaps not quite as low as wheat, but they are down 50 percent, or 100 percent in some instances, notwithstanding the fact that you have got no surplus.

Mr. WOODS. May I ask you what you mean by "no surplus"? Senator WHEELER. I mean, you have not got a surplus that you have to sell abroad, ordinarily.

Mr. WOODS. No.

Senator WHEELER. For instance, you have got a surplus of wheat-I mean that you produce more wheat in this country than we consume, and lots of people will say to you that by reason of that fact, that is why the price of wheat is so low at the present time; but likewise we have got lots of other products of which we do not produce more than we consume, and the price of those commodities is down.

Mr. Woods. Yes; but, Senator

Senator WHEELER (interposing). And the reason why all commodities are down in this country, of every kind and character, whether they are manufactured or otherwise, is because of the fact that today there is not purchasing power in the hands of the people of this country to buy the things that they want to eat and the things they want to wear, and if there was purchasing power in this country there are a great many people who would have radios and they would buy automobiles and buy new shoes and I would buy some new clothes and a lot of other things.

Mr. Woods. Yes.

Senator WHEELER. So that the real problem is to put purchasing power in the hands of the people who need these things, is it not? Mr. WOODS. It seems so to me.

Senator WHEELER. Now we are seeking to do that in this bill by raising the price of commodities to the farmer, to the wheat farmer and to the cotton farmer, and if you can raise the price of wheat and the price of cotton to the farmers, and the price of corn and the price. of hogs, then you are going to stimulate your whole price level throughout the United States, because when two or three or four of your major farm products go down, they bring down with them. everything under the sun that we produce, whether it is manufactured articles or anything else, unless they can artificially hold them up, like they do with aluminum, but everything else they can bring down. That is correct, is it not?

Mr. Woods. I think that part is not correct, that an increase in price necessarily means an increase in purchasing power to the farmer.

Senator WHEELER. Why not?

Mr. Woods. In the case of meat I think it might mean a decrease. We have no surplus in pork in the sense that it could not all be eaten up if you dropped the price low enough. If we could get the price per unit increased and still sell the same quantity, I would agree with you 100 percent. That would certainly increase the purchasing power.

Senator WHEELER. Of course that would absolutely increase the purchasing power if we could get the price up and still sell as much.

Mr. WOODS. Yes.

Senator WHEELER. Well, if he can get his price up, then the farmer is going to start in to buy, to buy clothes, buy the things that he needs, farm machinery, and radios and everything else, which is going to tend to stimulate the business of the country and put men to work in the factories.

Mr. WOODS. Yes; but he is going to spend the quantity of money that he gets.

Senator WHEELER. But if he gets more for his stuff and he is able to sell it, he is going to spend more.

Mr. WOODS. Yes, sir.

Senator WHEELER. And he is going to sell more products if these people that are walking the streets get jobs.

Mr. WOODS. Yes, sir.

Senator BANKHEAD. I understood you to say that if you could sell a small portion of your pork and lard in foreign markets, that that would increase the price to the farmers for the commodities here? Mr. WOODS. Yes; because we can sell a smaller supply at a higher price. If we had to sell just half the quantity of pork

Senator BANKHEAD (interposing). You mean you could raise your price then on that which you sell in this country?

Mr. Woods. If you reduce your supply, Senator, and the other conditions remain the same, the price will just naturally go up; if you increase your supply the price will go down.

Senator BANKHEAD. That is by reason of exporting part of the production, and thereby reducing the supply in this country.

Mr. WOODS. That would be right; yes.

Senator BANKHEAD. That would not apply to wheat too, would it? Mr. Woods. I do not know anything about wheat.

Senator BANKHEAD. You know the economic rule, if you have got a certain surplus and sell some of it now, that increases the prices in this country?

Mr. Woods. You would be surprised at how little I know about wheat. About the only time I come in contact with it is when I begin to feed stock.

Senator BANKHEAD. We exported about 20,000,000 bushels the last 6 months of last year. Take cotton, then, if wheat does not suit you. Now, we exported 6,000,000 bales of cotton. You do not say

that the foreign market puts the price upon the domestic market. do you?

Mr. WOODS. No; but I would imagine-I do not know what your tariff situation is here, but if it were poor and you did not export it and dumped it back here and had to eat all that at home, it would put the price down.

Senator WHEELER. What you are afraid of, as I gather it, if you raise the price at the present time of pork and cattle, they will eat less pork and cattle, and consequently the farmer will not grow pork and will not grow cattle, and will not get any more than he is getting at the present low prices because of the fact that he cannot sell it. Mr. Woods. He will get less for what he has got.

Senator BANKHEAD. The trouble with his argument, as I see it, Senator, is that he does not take into account the increased consuming and purchasing power, by reason of the increased commodity prices. He assumes the same purchasing power by the consumer, therefore

they could buy less, but when you put prices up and increase the purchasing power, he does not take that into account.

Senator KENDRICK. It ought to be borne in mind here that there is another feature that has not been touched upon, and that is that you are going to impose an enormous burden on this product as it moves from the producer through the processor to the consumer. There is no estimate as yet given as to what that cost will be, and that cost will not accrue that amount is not going to accrue in very large part to your consumer nor to your producer either.

(Senator Smith took the chair.)

Mr. Woods. Senator, if you are interested in examining the size of that tax, this report of the House committee shows what the rates would be. They show there that if you were going to put on a parity price, the tax in the case of cattle would be $4, in the case of hogs, $4.59 a hundred; on beef cattle, $2.10 a hundred, and lambs, $1.95. Now, when you figure that cattle will dress out about 53 or 54 percent, hogs will dress out about 75 percent, and sheep something less than 50, you have to write up those figures considerably more.

Senator KENDRICK. To take care of the fixed charges in the movement.

Mr. Woods. To take care of the actual shrinkage of cutting them up. And then add retailer's profit and expenses.

Senator FRAZIER. Mr. Chairman, if we are going to hear the other witnesses and get through this afternoon, we cannot take all the time on one witness. We have had an hour and a half now.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you lost out because I could not be here. [Laughter.]

Senator SHIPSTEAD. What do you get for hides now?

Mr. Woods. I cannot give you that offhand, but I will be glad to look it up and let you know.

Mr. CHAIRMAN. I will retire then, if I may. The only point I did want to make to clear this statement that you made, sir, is that we cannot sell the same supply, other conditions remaining the same, at an advanced price; we can sell a smaller supply at an advanced price, or we can sell a greater supply at a smaller price.

Senator WHEELER. The difference between you and some of us is that we are assuming that the conditions are not going to remain the same if we can get the price of farm commodities up; you are assuming that conditions are going to be the same if we do get farm commodities up. If we do not get them up, I agree with you; if we do get them up, you will be wrong.

Mr. Woods. If you get the quantity of money up I will agree with in the case of meat it does not work that way.

you;

Senator KENDRICK. I have a telegram here from Mr. J. Elmer Brock, president of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association, that I want to read into the record:

Senator JOHN B. KENDRICK,

United States Senate, Washington, D.C.:

CHEYENNE, Wyo., March 21, 1933.

We urge opposition to administration farm bill first because it would create immense and expensive bureau cost which must in end be borne by consumers including producers themselves. Second, because it delegates to Federal bureau unlimited and dangerous power to tax. If, however, it seems probable that bill

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