the House that services did not mean what it said. The House had the right to believe that it did mean what it said and that we did not have to go back and read something that was never brought before us before we determined how we would vote. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Poage, I have learned more about it today than I knew before. I had assumed that the House, even in the last few minutes of the session, may have been familiar with what took place in the Senate on this joint and acted in the light of that. Mr. POAGE. Are we not charged only with notice that is brought to us by our conferees, not by what somebody said over there? You cannot even refer on the floor of this House to what anybody said on the other side. But we sent some conferees to talk to the Senators and to bring back to us a discussion about what happened. Three of them are sitting right here. Those conferees went and talked to the Senators and they came back and told us, "Now, we have got something the House ought to pass." They came back and said, "We have something here that the House ought to pass." They brought back a long written statement that I grant you most of the Members of the House did not read, but they were charged with notice of what was brought back to them. They were not charged with notice of what happened somewhere else. They were charged with notice of what was brought back to them. They said, "We have in here services," a thing that this House has three times voted in favor of. Is it not rather strange construction to believe that this House established a legislative history that would prove that we did not want to do the thing that we had three times expressed ourselves in favor of? Mr. HUNTER. I can only repeat what I have said, Mr. Poage, that we look at the Congressional Record as we find it. I agree with you that the word "services" ordinarily would include labor. In view of this very distinct legislative history with no affirmative statement by the House, it would be my view that any opinion of the Solicitor's Office saying that labor should be included as service would do violence to what was intended. Mr. POAGE. Just one more question and I will quit pursuing this, because I realize we cannot come to any conclusion. Does the Solicitor's Office, or do the courts, have the right to go behind the plane of Wording of a statute, when it is plain and unambiguous? Can they say that while this is perfectly plain and while there is no question about the interpretation of a word they are going to place on it an interpretation which is not the commonly accepted interpretation because somebody in the course of the debate placed another interpretation on it. Mr. HUNTER. I think you will find recent opinions of the Supreme Court which have done that very thing, Mr. Poage. Mr. POAGE. I am afraid you will. I am afraid you will find opinions of the Supreme Court that have done a great many things that most of us thought could not be done. Mr. HOPE. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to make an observation. No matter what Mr. Poage's argument may be about the interpretation of the word "services," and I admit he has made an able argument on the point, the fact is that in the bills that the House has considered in the past which had for their purpose the inclusion of labor in the parity formula, they did not define that as service. They defined that as labor, as I recall it. I think it was defined as wages paid for labor. Mr. PACE. I think it was the wages of farm labor, including the operators. Mr. HOPE. That is my recollection of it. If you are going to go back through the history in the House, I do not believe it would bear out the theory that we interpreted the term services as including farm wages in the bills that we have considered in the past. Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, may I suggest that for the record and for the benefit of the new members Mr. Hunter be allowed to state what he had in mind there? We do not know. He has some point he wants to make on something that occurred in the Senate. We new members do not know what that is. Mr. PACE. Mr. Hunter, do you have there this overpowering language? Mr. HUNTER. I understand from Mr. Cooper that Senator Russell introduced an amendment expressly for the purpose of including hired labor by an express mention of it. That was turned down. I can find that in the record. Mr. PACE. Will you get that and let us know? We will go back to it. Mr. ALBERT. Mr. Chairman, may I ask one question for my own enlightenment? Mr. PACE. Mr. Albert. Mr. ALBERT. How much would it affect, on a percentage basis, the parity price of a given commodity if farm labor were included in the formula? Mr. HUNTER. Dr. Stine can answer that. Dr. STINE. Using hired labor only would, as of January, raise the parity level by eight to 10 percent. If the wages were weighted for all labor it would raise it by 25 to 30 percent. I cannot make a quick accurate computation on it. Mr. ALBERT. That is including the farmer's own work. Dr. STINE. All labor weighted by wages for paid labor. Mr. WHITE. It would raise it about 25 percent. Dr. STINE. About 25 or 30 percent. Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman. Mr. PACE. Mr. Hill. Mr. HILL. How do you come to a conclusion as to what the farmer's wages were? You can figure his help all right. Are you going to count the farmer the same as the laborer he hired, give him the same salary? He is the boss, the overseer. Dr. STINE. In this computation what we determine is the average wages paid hired farm labor. Then when we speak of weighing that for all labor, we take the number of workers for the year and weigh that by the total number of workers. I should make one other point in the explanation. The wage rate is used as an index. The wage rate is put into the index with a weighting for the amount paid out by farmers for labor, estimated, in relation to what they spend on other commodities and services. Then if you put in all workers, you increase that weight to allow for the labor of the farm operator and members of his family. Mr. PACE. Who actually work on the farm. Dr. STINE. Yes. Mr. HILL. But you would give them the same wage scale as the ordinary laborer, which is just as unfair as it could possibly be. He is the overseer. He has to supply the wants. He has to make the trips to town. He has to keep equipment in line. You are not going to give him any credit for being an expert. You just put him in the same wage scale as the man with the hoe. Mr. PACE. That is right. Mr. HOPE. I have another question. Mr. HOPE. Dr Stine, in making your computations as to the allowance that should be made for labor, under the bills we have had before Congress and I presume that is what you are basing it on-did you make any allowance for the fact that in some branches of agriculture mechanization has decreased the amount of labor that is used, or did you assume in your calculations that it took the same labor to harvest an acre of wheat now that it did in 1909 to 1914? Dr STINE. No; the index is not computed for each commodity. It is the over-all, treating the agriculture of the United States as if it were one big farm. Mr. PACE. And you take the actual report on the number of farm workers? Dr. STINE. Yes, and the average earnings of those workers. Mr. HOPE. Then you do not break it down as to any commodity, so, it is not to that extent a reflection of the cost of producing any particular farm commodity. In other words, in the case of cotton, if the cotton picker should come into universal use, that would not figure in your computations as to the wages of labor. Dr. STINE. That is right. Mr. HOPE. But you do take into consideration, I assume, the fact that the wages of a man who runs a combine in a wheat field are probably higher than the wages of a man who might have shocked wheat. Did you take that into account? Dr. STINE. Yes. Mr. PACE. But consideration is given to the introduction of the combine, for example, because it reduces the number of workers; and, therefore, the hired worker's index is reduced in the weight that is given. Dr. STINE. That is right. On the ther hand, the weight that goes for the machinery is increased by the expansion in the use of machinery. Mr. HOPE. Suppose we take the production of some fresh fruits and vegetables where you use just as much labor as you did in 1909 to 1914. In that case, it seems to me your labor figure would be a real index as to the difference in the farmer's costs in 1909 to 1914 because we will assume that they were getting lower wages then, but he had the same number of workers. That would probably be an accurate reflection of the difference in the farmer's expenses in that time. But, in the case of a crop like wheat, where a great change has taken place in the amount of labor employed, the inclusion of labor would add to the parity price of wheat a considerably larger amount than was actually added from the standpoint of the farmer's increased, expenditure; would it not? Dr. STINE. If you were working out a specific index for wheat, it would develop along the lines you suggest. Studies of that sort are being done in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, but they are not used in these parity computations. Mr. HOPE. În your parity computations you take the over-all picture; and, if there are a smaller number of farm workers in the country now than there were in 1901 to 1914, that factor would appear in the over-all, but not as to any particular commodity. Dr. STINE. That is right; a smaller number of workers and more machinery. Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I have another question. Mr. Hope, have you finished? Mr. HOPE. I am finished. Mr. PACE. Mr. Hill. Mr. HILL. When you increase your mechanization on a farm, if you are keeping any record of your expenses you must necessarily increase the quality or the type of farm hand, even if it is the foreman himself, considering his ability to operate the equipment. Certainly, the expenses do not go down on a farm proportionately as the farm mechanization increases because of the fact that the efficiency of handling the equipment itself becomes a very important element in the expense of operating a mechanized farm. It seems to me that you are just working exactly backward. I do not see why, with all the farm-management courses you have had in your agricultural colleges, you could not figure out the acreage expense of producing crops. Then you could forget all about the other elements we have been discussing here and say, "The records of the agricultural colleges throughout the United States show definitely that the actual labor expense of growing an acre of wheat is so much." We are not talking about production, but expense. As you increase the mechanization of wheat, then your labor expenses should go down proportionately provided you increase the efficiency of the man who handles the tractor or the combine or even the disk plow. Suppose he fails to oil it for one day and driving at 32 or 4 miles an hour? One day's work and every bearing on that disk is out. Dr. STINE. You are misstating the situation, I think. Mr. HILL. You would not do a thing like that to the farmer; would you? Dr. STINE. We do have farm-management studies. Mr. HILL. Yes, you do; plenty of them. Dr. STINE. They show what you suggest they should show. However, this parity computation is not based on such farm-management studies except to the extent that we use the farm-management studies to determine what farmers are hiring or buying, what money they are spending, and what they are spending it for. We are weighting these prices by what they are spending their money for. Mr. HILL. There is no reason why you should not use them more, is there? Is there any reason in the world why you should not use the farm-management courses from these colleges to give you information. Dr. STINE. We are using them, but we are using them in two different ways. What is provided for here is an over-all parity measure for all agricultural products based upon what all farmers spend their money for in relation to what they get for what they produce. We are using in the weighting and the construction of those indices the farm-management studies to find out what are the costs of operation. Mr. HILL. In a case like that, do you put the inefficient farmer in, the fellow who never takes care of his equipment or land? Dr. STINE. Everybody is in who is on the farm and working. Mr. ANDRESEN. Will you put in the record at this point, Mr. Stine, the list of commodities that the farmer buys to let us know just exactly how you make up this formula? Dr. STINE. Yes. (The information referred to is as follows:) INDEXES OF PRICES PAID BY FARMERS FOR COMMODITIES, AND OF PRICES PAID, INTEREST, AND TAXES, 1910-48 Parity prices for agricultural commodities having as their base the period August 1909-July 1914 are calculated by the use of the index of prices paid, interest, and taxes, while parity prices for commodities whose base period is August 1910-July 1929 or August 1934-July 1939 are computed by use of the index of prices paid. Each of these indexes is published each month in Agricultural Prices. In view of the widespread interest in parity prices and in the parity indexes currently in use, a short description of the construction of these indexes, together with appropriate tabulations, is reissued in the following pages. What is the index of prices paid by farmers for commodities? It is a measure of over-all changes that occur in the level of prices paid by farmers and their families for commodities used in living and farm production. The index is based upon prices for 86 items used in family living and 91 items used in farm production. Prices are obtained quarterly in March, June, September, and December from several thousand independent retail merchants serving the farm 89277-49-ser. d, pt. 1 |