Mr. JONES. That will have to be developed by the committee to place the correct figure in there. I could have put $200 million in there and I would have been conforming to the views that have been expressed, in probably 15 or 20 bills that have been introduced in this body and in the other body. Frankly, I do not think it will take $200 million to do it. I think when we get Mr. Smith from the Farmers Home Administration on the stand, we will develop the fact that they have spent less money in the program they are now carrying on than they had anticipated they would spend.

Mr. POAGE. What do you suggest we put in here? The committee has to make a decision. That is what we need help on. We know

that they had floods. We do need help on what we ought to do. Mr. JONES. I hope you will, Mr. Chairman, take into consideration

the fact that I have been conscientious in not trying to

Mr. POAGE. You are the man that has a bill here before us?

Mr. JONES. I can tell you how much it will take for my section.

Mr. POAGE. We have to pass a bill for the Nation.

Mr. JONES. I know that. Take these various sections and add them

up. That is the way we will get it.

Mr. POAGE. Somebody has to make some suggestions.

Mr. JONES. I will suggest $200 million.

Mr. POAGE. All right.

Mr. McINTIRE. Either you or Mr. Jones can answer this question. On page 3

Mr. POAGE. We have already gone into that.

Mr. McINTIRE. All right then.

Mr. POAGE. They are going to take that out.

Mr. McINTIRE. I am sorry for being late this morning. May I ask this question, Mr. Gathings? In your support of this legislation, why limit it to December 31, 1958?

Mr. GATHINGS. Because of the fact that the disaster that has befallen our people was due to 1957 excess rainfall. They are right now in need of relief. They are in need of credit. They need these loansbadly need these loans to wipe out these open accounts.

Mr. McINTIRE. I am not presuming to make an observation that would be interpreted as a commitment on the legislation, but there is an awful lot of machinery to be set up administratively under this bill. There is a lot of policy that has got to be determined.

Mr. GATHINGS. That is right. I believe, though, you will find that the Farmers Home Administration probably would be the agency that would administer it. They have their representatives in every affected county.

Mr. McINTIRE. I know that. But you are reaching into areas here which at the present time have no administrative procedure set up to perform the function which you set up here.

Mr. GATHINGS. That is right. It might be necessary to ask for funds for that very purpose to employ personnel-the needed personnel. Mr. McINTIRE. I am sure it will.

Mr. GATHINGS. To go before the Supplemental Appropriations Committee.

Mr. McINTIRE. But my point is that it seems to me that the justification for this resides in the fact that while it is directly more appro

priate to the problem in your own district, this type of situation has occurred not infrequently every year throughout the United States; does it not?

Mr. GATHINGS. Yes.

Mr. McINTIRE. I was somewhat interested in view of the fact that it does-in fact, we had a hurricane in New England a couple of times in the last 25 years, but nothing was done or proposed, so far as I recall, in this type of an approach to meet the farmer's problem in that area, and that is no criticism, but is simply an observation.

Why limit this legislation if it is meritorious to one area, and why limit it to December 31 ?

Mr. GATHINGS. I agree with the gentleman that it may be necessary to pass legislation for a longer period.

Mr. McINTIRE. There will be another problem coming up somewhere else.

Mr. GATHINGS. I agree heartily, since these first bills were introduced on this subject they have had this freeze in Florida. So we do know that these disasters come, year in and year out. While we are vitally concerned about the problem as it affects us at this moment, we may have the same thing happen this year or next year.

Mr. McINTIRE. Yes.

Mr. GATHINGS. Or some other part of the Nation would find itself in a situation of this kind.

Mr. JONES. Before you came in, I explained that I went down to the Department of Agriculture-to explain to Mr. McIntire-and one of their lawyers drew the bill and it was presented to him just as an emergency bill. Actually, of course, so far as this year is concerned we hope it will be taken care of promptly and that these loans will be made. In fact, they have to be made within the next 2 or 3 months so far as that is concerned, if they are going to do any good. If we want to adopt permanent legislation I would like to see that done, but this was presented on the basis of the emergency as it existed at this time, and perhaps I am not as familiar with the actual wording, except I relied on the ability of the man in the Department in whom I have the utmost confidence. He drew the bill and I went to them so that they could draw something that they felt could be administered with the least amount of trouble and could be put into effect with the least amount of delay. So the wording of the bill is that of the Department.

Mr. GATHINGS. I sent out to my people information that the SBA amendment had been approved by the House of Representatives. When it was signed by the President, I again sent out the information that it had been signed. Quite a lot of the correspondence came back to me, "Oh, yes, the SBA bill has been signed, but what are you going to do about us folks who now have these open accounts that we need help on? We do need this other legislation that had been originally proposed in the Senate."

Mr. POAGE. Thank you, Mr. Gathings.
Mr. Rogers, do you want to be heard?

STATEMENT OF HON. WALTER ROGERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS OF THE 18TH DISTRICT OF THE STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. ROGERS. I just wanted to make one observation, Mr. Chairman. I have not prepared a statement but I want to compliment all of those who introduced bills on this subject and, especially, the bill that has been introduced by Mr. Jones of Missouri.

I could outline to you numerous situations in my district and, of course, in that entire section of the country out there. But knowing the research that this committee has done on the subject, I think it would be wasting time to do it.

I do think this, I think we have a problem that is affecting our entire economy. Although as Mr. Jones pointed out this has to do with a temporary situation, it has developed from this disaster. I think we should take a long look at this type of legislation with some degree of permanency, because most of the people that have come out of my district were affected by the drought disaster and could not borrow money and had no choice but to go into the towns and look for a job, cannot go back to the farm. You can keep those people on the farms now with this type of legislation, where they can borrow some money, in order to meet their needs. You not only can keep them on the farm but you can help to solve this recession that is taking hold in this country because the little merchants in these small towns are depending upon their collections from these farmers to stay in business themselves. In one particular instance in Hereford, Tex., they called me and told me that business had picked up about 50 percent after Mr. Benson had announced his price supports on grain sorghums, which show you how sensitive those small towns are to what the Department of Agriculture does. And I think that this sort of legislation and the permanent legislation along these lines is a good investment for this country because you can keep those people on those farms for just about one-hundredth of what it will cost to put them back on there some day after they get into the cities and cause a lot of trouble.

I know that the Farmers Home Administration has tried to do an excellent job but I know that they are not going to stick their necks out and subject themselves to criticism for making bad loans. I think it is up to the Congress to move in and provide them with the authority to take care of the situation. I think it would be a great contribution to what this country needs in the farm areas.

It

Mr. HARRISON. You would not consider these bad loans, would you? Mr. ROGERS. The question of a bad loan, of course, is something that varies with the different districts. If a man does not have adequate security, some fellows will say that is a bad loan. He just won't make a character loan. He does not like to make that kind of loan. creates a very bad situation where a fellow has strained his credit as far as he can go; he wants to stay on the farm but he does not have any place to go to get any money to stay in business with. If you ever let him get off he will not be able to borrow money to get back on.

Mr. HARRISON. What percentage of these people who have been struck by this disaster would you say were in a position that they could not go to the bank or the Farmers Home Administration or some other lending organization to get money to continue their operations?

Mr. Jones said $200 million for the whole thing.
Mr. JONES. That is for the whole United States.

Mr. ROGERS. You mean the amount of money that would be required?

Mr. HARRISON. Yes; what percentage of the farmers would you think in your area, or some other area, would be in the position that they would need this kind of loan?

Mr. ROGERS. I would hestitate to make a guess at that as to the percentage. I think that your estimates will probably be based upon what you generally see in these farming communities. To give you an example of what has happened in one community in my district, that has long been a well-known farm community producing some wonderful citizens for this country as well as wonderful crops. I was out there not long ago and for every house that was occupied there were three vacant there, standing there rotting.

Mr. HARRISON. Was that due to the disaster?

Mr. ROGERS. Due to this entire farm situation, to be perfectly honest about it, and the disaster was the final chip.

Mr. McINTIRE. Could I ask you, Is there any land abandoned that was formerly in the commercial territory of that community? Mr. ROGERS. You mean in the commercial farms?

Mr. MOINTIRE. In this community.

Mr. ROGERS. No.

Mr. McINTIRE. That was in the trading center. Has there been any land abandoned?

Mr. ROGERS. That is the land. The houses I am talking about are the ones on the farms.

Mr. McINTIRE. I realize that. land idle?

The house can be vacant, but is the

Mr. ROGERS. The land isn't idle. No; the land isn't idle. The land simply has been bought in. It isn't being farmed like it was before, but these people that came off the farms went into the cities to get jobs. That is where a lot of your recession is developing right now. And these little merchants in these towns not only lose the money that those people owe them in many instances but they lose them as customers who some day might get enough cash to pay them off and start trading with them again.

Mr. McINTIRE. Yes. Some of these changes are inevitable.
Mr. ROGERS. I do not think there is any question about that.

Mr. McINTIRE. My little community had a sawmill. When the logs were gone nobody was there.

Mr. ROGERS. When we got automobiles the buggy manufacturer went out of business. You cannot help that sort of thing.

Mr. MCINTYRE. When the automobile came it changed-the community 15 miles away drew the trade from the one that was a mile away. And so the one that was nearby has taken a reduction in the volume of business that it was doing.

Some of those changes you cannot help.

Mr. ROGERS. In the economic picture I can appreciate it. But what I am afraid of, I mean in the overall picture, if we are going to project our thinking that far, we will get this economy out of balance and get all of these people into the metropolitan areas and when we do we will have social problems that will cost us a lot more than what

ever few losses you might suffer in something like this to keep them on the farms and spread out throughout the country where they ought to be. That is just basically to me, that is the way I feel. I think if Mr. Benson were to announce 90 percent of parity price supports on basic tomorrow and high price supports on nonbasics, it would do more to settle the recession at least than anything that could be done right now. Maybe I am wrong about it but that is the way I feel about it. Mr. JOHNSON. When Benson made his announcement and you say business went up in our country-when he made his announcement business has been bad in mine. You must have gotten more than you expected.

Mr. ROGERS. The bankers there would not make any loans of any kind to those farmers until they knew what the price supports situation would be, and the merchants would not extend any more credit. It has loosened it up so in this particular town.

Mr. POAGE. Are there further questions. If not we thank you.
Mr. ROGERS. Thank you.

Mr. POAGE. Dr. Long, do you care to make a statement?

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE S. LONG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS OF THE EIGHTH DISTRICT OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Mr. LONG. I came more for information. I am in support of this legislation and I would like to say in support of what has been said this morning that I live in a district that has suffered much. In the beginning, in the spring, why we had much rain, and the crops were all late, but they did make a fair crop. But in the fall the storms and the rain came again and they were unable to gather these crops, and much of that that they did gather was damaged and the grade of the cotton and of the other products were reduced until the price was so small that they are faced now in my district with the proposition of whether or not they will be able to stay on the farm or whether they will have to go somewhere else. And it is my opinion that many of these people will be forced into the smaller towns, seeking day labor, and they will be forced on to the relief rolls, and that the Government will suffer there more for having to pay that than they will if they make these small loans with whatever losses that they may have from them.

I feel that this really is something that will help to keep people on the farm, that want to stay on the farm more than anything that I know of.

I want to thank the chairman and this committee for the privilege of appearing this morning.

Mr. POAGE. We are delighted to have you, Dr. Long.

Are there any questions? If not, thank you very much.

Mr. LONG. Thank you.

Mr. POAGE. We are glad to have you come in and visit us any time.

I want the record to show that Congressman Morris from Oklahoma.

was with us for some time, and was apparently called out.

Mr. JONES. Congressman Everett from Tennessee is here.
Mr. POAGE. Would you like to make a statement?