thing. We cannot write a law for this area along the Mississippi River and at the same time write a law for the situation in California, a law for the high plains of Texas and a law for the brushlands of Texas and a law for the Delta on the Mississippi. Every one of them, while of the same character, has some little difference. Why not give it to Missouri, a fair share of the acreage allotment, put general language in there to keep everybody from going wild and let Missouri settle its own problem?

Mr. EDWARDS. The State of Oklahoma, for instance, has been decreasing its acreage. It is 7 percent last year under 1947. You would allot to Oklahoma a certain reserve of so many thousands of

acres.

Mr. PACE. Oklahoma, from the standpoint of cotton acreage, as I see it, is in worse position than any State in the Union. It has reduced its acreage from 4,174,000 acres 20 years ago down to 1,074,000 acres in 1948.

Mr. EDWARDS. And they may continue to do that. Then in case you set aside a reserve for them, what becomes of that acreage? Mr. PACE. The first thing Oklahoma would get would be additional acreage for any war crops that they planted instead of cotton. That would help them some. Then we would do for Oklahoma exactly what I suggest for Missouri. If they wound up with a million acres going to the State of Oklahoma, they would allot 900,000 acres under a formula and they would have a hundred thousand acres to take care of whatever conditions might exist.

Mr. EDWARDS. I think that answers exactly what I said except this: Supposing Oklahoma continues its trends and supposing you give them an allotment of 2 percent, for instance, or 50,000 acres out of the 10 percent. Suppose they do not plant that to cotton. They just simply are quitting the cotton industry.

Now then, where does the acreage go?

Mr. PACE. You mean in your State or Oklahoma?

Mr. EDWARDS. In Oklahoma, that acreage that was not used. Mr. PACE. If you have an area like you have in Texas, that is going out of cotton and another area coming into cotton, that is one of the things you would do with this 10 percent. You would go to those areas where they are going out and offer them some cotton and they would not want it. All right, we will put it over here where they do want it.

Mr. EDWARDS. In other words, you would turn it back to the Secretary of Agriculture?

Mr. PACE. To the State committee.

Mr. EDWARDS. I know, but if one State went out and the other increased, you would have trouble there.

Mr. PACE. Then that would be reflected in the next year in making that State's allotment.

Mr. EDWARDS. You might take care of it that way.

Mr. PACE. I have complete sympathy with your problem but I do not see how we can sit here in Washington and legislate for your area and at the same time legislate for every other area that has the same problem.

Mr. EDWARDS. There has to be a common rule.

Mr. PACE. The best thing I know to do is to give it to Missouri and let Missouri settle its own problem among its own people.

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Mr. EDWARDS. If that were done, there would be some provision somewhere, I assume, that when that acreage came to Missouri that would have to be allotted, for instance, to lands that did not have a full allotment.

Mr. PACE. Oh, yes, there would be standards set up. But in addition to this 10 percent which, in the illustration I am using, would be 50,000 acres, the State committee would also get its fair proportion of the new grower allotment, which might be 25,000 more acres. So your State committee would then have 75,000 acres in Missouri to handle Missouri's problem. If that is not home rule, I do not know what it is. I think they can do a better job than we can here in Washington.

Mr. EDWARDS. You understand I am not arguing the point, but the other reaches the same result exactly because the county committee certifies to every State committee and the State committee certifies to the Department of Agriculture a certain acreage and the Secretary has to approve 35,000 acres of land. I do have some confidence in the integrity of the Department.

Now then, one other thing I want to ask about is this: We have a territory there, as I have explained to you, that is on the borderline. We grow wheat, corn, and cotton. Some of the people in our particular locality just are not cotton farmers. But, as I understand, we would be classed in the southern ration. I get the information that there would be a commercial corn area and a commercial cotton area and that we would be classed in that southern region. Mr. PACE. You are jumping the gun there.

Mr. EDWARDS. It might be.

Mr. PACE. There are no decisions on that question. There is certainly not going to be such a thing as a commercial cotton area. Mr. EDWARDS. The point I have in mind is that you would not take a farm in southeast Missouri and give it an allotment for corn and also an allotment for cotton.

Mr. PACE. Why?

Mr. EDWARDS. Well, we wish you would, but then I just would not think it would be wise.

Mr. PACE. As I understand it, Mr. Edwards, if the corn growers consider quotas seriously, which I very seriously doubt, then one of the big questions is going to be whether or not they are going to expand the commercial corn area or whether they are going to take the county production figure and drop over here and add an isolated county and on the other hand add another isolated county, that would be different. We are a long way from that decision and that is why I say you are jumping the gun.

From the little information we have, the corn growers are not interested in quotas.

Mr. EDWARDS. The way it worked down there before under the allotment system, when our new growers came in they got down to the point where they finally gave the new ground fellows--and we have a big development down there-one-tenth of 1 percent for his new ground. That was the same as nothing. Then they gave him also under another rule 5 acres as a minimum. But if he did not stay in the corn program at a certain time, you understand, he got penalized on his cotton and he had to pay the corn penalty out of this cotton. So it just made a bad situation, all of which we point out to you in the brief.

Mr. PACE. One other question, Mr. Edwards. Tell me just a little more about this new area that is being reclaimed. Who owns that land now?

Mr. EDWARDS. Let me give you one illustration. The crossroads of America are full of the same kind of boys. I will tell you of a young fellow by the name of Roscoe Chetwood, who came out of the Air Service and came back home. He has two children. He is a boy who is wedded to the farm. He is a graduate of the Missouri University. He is as fine a clean-cut man as you ever saw. He wants to farm. He bought a tractor and got himself a span of mules and he rented a little farm that happened to have a cabin on it and he moved into it. Then he bought 160 acres of land under section 424.15. When he bought that land it was uncleaned. He has cleared that land up, or at least 140 acres of it, and he has a marvelous crop on it this year. You understand that the cotton people generally are not rich people. The people who get out and produce the cotton are not rich. A good many of them are pretty helpless. That is right I know.

What would we do with a boy of that kind-and the crossroads of America are full of them by the hundreds of thousands-if we do not protect his rights and give him the right to farm?

Mr. PACE. Well, we are going to give Missouri some acreage and let Missouri take care of that boy.

Mr. EDWARDS. That may be the way to answer the problem. Mr. PACE. Who owns all this great area that is being reclaimed? Mr. EDWARDS. Well, there is a diversity of ownership in there. I think the Government sets out that there are about 83,000 acres in the district and it is owned in little units from 40 acres up to two or three thousand acres. Sometimes there may be an ownership that is

heavier than that.

Mr. PACE. It is already owned by individual owners?

Mr. EDWARDS. Oh, yes.

Mr. PACE. Why have they not had cotton on it in the past? Mr. EDWARDS. It is subject, you understand, to the backwater from the Mississippi River. When you go way up in the upper ends of it it is high enough that some years they grow a cotton crop. you get down in the lower end it has not even been cleared due to the fact that the reclamation has not been provided.

Mr. PACE. It never has even been cleared?

Mr. EDWARDS. A great deal of it; yes, sir.

When

Mr. PACE. Has the Government paid all the expense of this levee, and so forth?

Mr. EDWARDS. That is right. They will be back here before Congress. The Army engineers will be around for a donation of about $70,000,000 to carry that and a lot of other projects out at the same time. It must, of course. It would be absurd to spend this money to reclaim those lands and then not be permitted to develop them and farm them. The Government would have thrown the money away like building a house and never moving into it.

Mr. PACE. The owners themselves are making no contributions to the cost of the reclamation?

Mr. EDWARDS. Not this final reclamation. They did originally contribute and the bonds are still on the land. Mr. Chetwood's tax was $1 an acre a year for his drainage and 70 cents an acre a

year for this levee. But the landowners put in about $2,000,000 originally.

Mr. PACE. Thank you very much, Mr. Edwards. Mr. Davis, is there anything you would like to add?

Mr. DAVIS. Nothing in particular, Congressman Pace.

I represent a group in a county north of Mr. Edwards' county, Mississippi County.

Mr. PACE. Are you in this drainage area?

Mr. DAVIS. It is a portion of our area. Personally, I like the recommendations made here by the Arkansas-Missouri group. I like that recommendation. I think the State allotment will be entirely satisfactory.

I have a lot of confidence in our people and I think it will be satisfactory.

Mr. PACE. Giving Missouri the acreage and letting Missouri work it out?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes.

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PACE. Mr. White.

Mr. WHITE. I have a question for Mr. Edwards before he goes. While you have been talking, Mr. Edwards, I just made a quick calculation on Missouri's acreage figures for the years 1945 through 1948, which are the 4 years the Department of Agriculture recommends using in establishing acreage quotas. I have compared that to your 1948 acreage. I note it produces a reduction of 27 percent as compared to 1948. That would be a pretty drastic reduction for your State to have to take that big a reduction, would it not?

Mr. EDWARDS. When we are expanding it will; yes, sir.

Mr. WHITE. Whether you are expanding or not it would be pretty bad.

Mr. EDWARDS. But it is aggravated more by an expansion, of

course.

Mr. WHITE. Would you not be in sympathy with a program which would alleviate the shock, let us say, to these very few States that would suffer such a tremendous blow to their economy by this proposal of the Department of Agriculture?

Mr. EDWARDS. I think by all means this committee should work out some formula to permit the changing of our acreage shift. I believe in that.

Mr. WHITE. And we should make the reduction uniform from 1948, which is our present economy?

Mr. EDWARDS. Of course, it will be sharp enough any way you work it.

Mr. WHITE. Thank you.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Suppose we do not do anything?

Mr. EDWARDS. Leave an open program?

Mr. ABERNETHY. Suppose we let it alone, let it remain as is? What would happen?

Mr. EDWARDS. You mean no quotas voted?

Mr. ABERNETHY. Yes, sir.

Mr. EDWARDS. You would have a tremendous overproduction of cotton with a tremendous drop in price. There would be no profit in it. You would be taking away the fertility of your soil and selling it for subsistence.

Mr. ABERNETHY. In other words, you feel that there must be a new quota law?

Mr. EDWARDS. I think so.

With all of its bad features, I think I will have to say so. I think it is in the interest of the welfare of

the country.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Suppose they had to cut back from 25 million to 17 million acres in order to maintain cotton as a profitable crop? Mr. EDWARDS. Well, it is a good deal like the mechanism in a kite that will not fly. If it will not fly, it will not fly. If it would not support the people, it would not support the people.

I do not know what price you are going to base the cotton on. Mr. ABERNETHY. Well, would you support quotas based on a cut from 25 to 17% million acres?

I

Mr. EDWARDS. For my own individual land, I certainly would. do not know whether it is good for the economy of the country or not. I am not trying to tell you about that.

Mr. ABERNETHY. That would be a drastic cut, even more so than Mr. White suggested. I am just trying to find out what you would stand if the proposition was submitted.

Mr. EDWARDS. After listening to you gentlemen and the testimony here, I have about made up my mind I am going to have to live within my income, whatever that happens to be. I do not want to do it, but I will have to submit to it.

Mr. PACE. Is that all?

Mr. ABERNETHY. Yes, sir.

Mr. PACE. Thank you both, gentlemen.

Gentlemen, so far as I know, that concludes all the witnesses for this week.

The committee stands adjourned until 10 o'clock Monday morning. (Whereupon, at 3:40 p. m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at 10 o'clock a. m., Monday, February 7, 1949.)

Hon. STEPHEN PACE,

NEW MADRID, Mo., March 25, 1949.

Representative in Congress, Washington, D. C.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN PACE: As the temporary chairman of a voluntary mass meeting of cotton growers in Missouri at Caruthersville at 2 p. m., March 23, I have been requested to send you a copy of the signed resolution which was adopted at such meeting.

Accordingly, therefore, I enclose herewith a copy of the said resolution and respectfully ask that the same be considered in deliberations of the House of Representatives at the proper time in connection with proposed farm legislation. Respectfully yours,

RESOLUTION

J. V. CONRAN.

To: The Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Eighty-first Corgress, Washington, D. C.

(Attention: the Honorable Stephen Pace, chairman of the Subcommittee on Cotton.)

GENTLEMEN: Whereas it has come to the attention of the undersigned cotton producers of the State of Missouri that certain statements have been made before the subcommittee on Cotton and to the Congress of the United States Government and certain documents filed before the said subcommittee which purport to reflect the sentiments of the cotton growers in Missouri as they pertain to proposed cotton control legislation; and

Whereas it is the opinion of the group of cotton growers in Missouri, which is represented at this meeting, that the said sentiments expressed, both verbally and in writing, before the said committee in Washington, do not fairly represent the