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AGRICULTURAL EMERGENCY ACT TO
INCREASE FARM PURCHASING POWER

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY

UNITED STATES SENATE

SEVENTY-THIRD CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

H. R. 3835

AN ACT TO RELIEVE THE EXISTING NATIONAL
ECONOMIC EMERGENCY BY INCREASING
AGRICULTURAL PURCHASING POWER

MARCH 17, 24, 25, 27, AND 28, 1933

Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry

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AGRICULTURAL EMERGENCY ACT TO INCREASE FARM

PURCHASING POWER

FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1933

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m. in its committee room, Senate Office Building, Senator Ellison D. Smith presiding, to consider H.R. 3835, an act to relieve the existing national economic emergency by increasing agricultural purchasing power.

Present: Senators Smith (chairman), Kendrick, Wheeler, Thomas of Oklahoma, McGill, Bankhead, Bulow, Caraway, Bone, Murphy, Pope, Norris, McNary, Capper, Norbeck, Frazier, and Shipstead.

There were present before the committee Hon. Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture; Mr. R. G. Tugwell, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture; Mr. Frederick P. Lee, special counsel, Department of Agriculture; Mr. Mordecai Ezekial, economic adviser, Department of Agriculture.

The committee had under consideration H.R. 3835, a bill to relieve the existing national economic emergency by increasing agricultural purchasing power.

[H.R. 3835, Seventy-third Congress, first session]

AN ACT To relieve the existing national economic emergency by increasing agricultural purchasing power

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the present acute economic emergency being in part the consequence of a severe and increasing disparity between the prices of agricultural and other commodities, which disparity has largely destroyed the purchasing power of farmers for industrial products, has broken down the orderly exchange of commodities, and has seriously impaired the agricultural assets supporting the national credit structure, it is hereby declared that these conditions in the basic industry of agriculture have affected transactions in agricultural commodities with a national public interest, have burdened and obstructed the normal currents of commerce in such commodities, and render imperative the immediate enactment of this act.

DECLARATION OF POLICY

SEC. 2. It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress

(1) To establish and maintain such balance between the production and consumption of agricultural commodities, and such marketing conditions therefor, as will reestablish prices to farmers at a level that will give agricultural commodities a purchasing power with respect to articles that farmers buy, equivalent to the purchasing power of agricultural commodities in the pre-war period, August 1909-July 1914; and

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