(c) Payments to qualified individuals shall be made monthly. SEC. 2. Any individual making application for the benefits of this Act shall furnish such evidence of age, citizenship, and residence as the Administrator may by regulation prescribe. Whether a Federal income tax with respect to the income of any individual were payable for any taxable year shall, for the purposes of this Act, be established from records and data in the possession of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secretary of the Treasury shall upon request furnish to the Administrator any documents, records, or information which he may have relating to whether a Federal income tax were payable for any taxable year with respect to the income of any applicant for the benefits of this Act.

SEC. 3. No payment to any State under title I of the Social Security Act, as amended, shall be made for any quarter beginning on or after the date of enactment of this Act.

SEC. 4. The Administrator shall prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act.

SEC. 5. As used in paragraph (2) of subsection (b) of the first section of this Act, the term "United States" means the States, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

Old-age assistance: Recipients and payments to recipients, by State,

Old-age assistance: Recipients and payments to recipients, by State,
October 1949 1-Continued

1 For definition of terms see the Bulletin, January 1948, pp. 24-26. All data subject to revision. Includes 15,855 recipients under 65 years of age in California and 3,269 in Colorado and payments to these recipients for which Federal participation is not available.

3 Increase of less than 0.05 percent.

4 Represents approximate amount of fiscal month authorizations; in some counties only 1 check was issued in the change from monthly to semimonthly payments.

The CHAIRMAN. Congressman Wheeler, was it your desire to make a statement?

STATEMENT OF HON. W. M. (DON) WHEELER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA

Representative WHEELER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to just say a word in the way of introduction of Mr. Oettmeier. I do not propose to speak for the Forest Farmers Association, which he represents of which he is president, but I would like to say to the committee that there is no man in the Southeast who can better speak in the interest of people who are interested in the forestry industry than Bill Oettmeier of Fargo and Valdosta, Ga. I know Bill Oettmeir by reputation and personnally. There is no finer man, and there is no man in the Southeast who has the interest of that section of the country and his nation at heart more than does Bill Oettmeier. You can do well to listen as he presents his case to you, gentlemen.

Mr. OETTMEIER. Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very glad to hear from you, sir.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM M. OETTMEIER, PRESIDENT, FOREST FARMERS ASSOCIATION, FARGO, GA.

Mr. OETTMEIER. Senator George and gentlemen of the committee, as mentioned by Congressman Wheeler, my name is William M. Oettmeier, and I am president of the Forest Farmers Association of Valdosta, Ga.

I make my living managing 208,000 acres of forest land, known as Suwannee Forest, owned by Superior Pine Products Co.

In qualifying myself for what I am going to say, I might add that for 24 years I have been connected with ferestry in the South, both in managing a large tract and in cooperating and operating with small timberland owners. In our presentation here, we are mostly interested in the term "employee" as defined in H. R. 6000, presently before you.

We think it is almost disastrous to the forest industry of the South, or the Nation as a whole, when one considers that for the past 25 or 30 years the Federal agencies and the State agencies have been working extremely hard with what we call the small timberland owner. He is the man to whom, I think, President Roosevelt referred when he said that the South was the No. 1 economic forestry problem.

In the South, as you know, we burned our lands over years ago, and continued to burn them until an era which started about 20 years ago. All during this time the small owner has been the man who was the cause of all the trouble. The man who owned the large tract of land could well afford fire protection. He had enough education and knowledge to know that he benefited more and the Nation benfited more by good forestry management and good fire protection.

I should like to point out that 76 percent of the privately owned forest land in the United States is owned by four and a quarter million people, the average of which is 62 acres, and the balance of the privately owned forest land-the other 24 percent-is owned by 3,600 people, the latter being in tracts of over 5,000 acres of commercial forest land. In other words, of the total number of people represented, the small owner represents 99.9 percent of the owners; that is, by forest land ownership. So it is important from the point of view of what I am saying that we take this into consideration before we upset a precedent we set 20 years or more ago-to get this small timberland owner in line.

Those of us who work in associations, and so forth, promised the small timberland owner that if he practiced good forestry and fire protection we would get the pulp industry in the South and grow more timber, and that his life in the future would be more livable. In other words, he would have income from this forest land.

As I interpret this term of "employee" in the present Social Security Act, there is an awful risk, and a great risk involved. I have been informed by people who interpret these things better than I that the consumer of the raw materials, that is, the manufacturer thereof, is liable to be responsible not only for social security but by amendment to the Internal Revenue Act may be liable to the wage-and-hour law. This proposed change goes so far down that while the paper mill and big sawmill operator has no actual control over these men, he may be liable for their social security, their wage-and-hour law, and maybe other actions of employees who are not actually his employees but employees of others. In that connection, we run an awful risk of putting the sawmills and these paper mills in the position of having to go out and produce their own pulpwood and their own saw logs. Today that work is mostly farmed out to small operators, to people known as contractors, who in turn employ producers. While there may be 500 or 1,000 trucks (for each mill) delivering wood to railroad sidings and to paper mills, those 500 or 1,000 trucks may be in the ownership of 300 or 400 or 500 small producers. The man who owns one or two trucks can afford to go out to one of these average 62-acre places or even if it is 500 or 1,000 acres—make a contract, cut the man's sawlogs or cross ties or pulpwood, and deliver to the mills. If the paper mill or the sawmill has to produce its own wood, it first puts out of employment, naturally, the contractor; and then he puts out of employment these hundreds and hundreds of small producers, and the paper-mill people can tell you better than I how many there are.

Further than that, gentlemen-and this is the greatest disadvantage to our forestry in the South-is the fact that when the paper-mill operator goes out, or the big sawmill operator goes out, he cannot afford to stop at a 100-acre tract or a 500-acre tract. In order to produce in volume, he has to have 5, 10, or 20 or more trucks, a large crew of men, and he has to go to a big place and operate on his own land; whereas, the small producers or contractors operate all over on tracts as small

as 5 acres.

I should say that right today the majority of the pulpwood in the South is produced from small ownership.

Now, what happens if they forget the small men? Those of us who agitated this forestry program years ago told the small owners that if they practiced good forestry, they would have a good market for their crops; but if this bill is passed as is, and if the small owner is bypassed, we will all have to go back to where we started 20 years ago.

Senator MILLIKIN. I wonder if you could tell me how long it takes the kind of a tree that you are referring to, to mature in the South? Mr. OETTMEIER. In our section of the South, Senator, it depends on what you are growing it for.

Senator MILLIKIN. Let us assume it is for the purpose of pulpwood. Mr. OETTMEIER. It takes about 10 to 12 years for that purpose, Senator. That is, under certain conditions; if it is done under proper management. If it is under poor management, it takes longer.

Senator MILLIKIN. Let us assume it is for the purpose of fence posts or railroad ties or something like that.

Mr. OETTMEIER. Senator, fence posts is a small operation in the South. It is either dead wood, or from trees cut in thinnings which are creosoted; it just involves small saplings, not over 5 or 6 years old. Senator MILLIKIN. Now take a railroad tie.

Mr. OETTMEIER. Railroad ties are usually from farily well mautured trees, from 20 to 40 years old, depending on whether or not they are in the turpentine area, that is whether they have been grown as such. The sawlogs run from 25 to 40 or more years.

Senator MILLIKIN. What are the different types of trees that you have in mind?

Mr. OETTMEIER. In our particular section of the South, throughout what we call the naval stores belt, it is practically slash and long-leaf pine. In that area, we also have the various short-leaf pines such as Toblolly. Cypress is practically gone, from the commercial standpoint.

Senator MILLIKIN. I am probably asking a very stupid question, but I should like to know what you mean by the expression "naval stores."

Mr. OETTMEIER. That is turpentine and rosin, Senator. I have forgotten that some of the folks are not used to our terminology in the South. Naval stores means the manufacture of turpentine and rosin from the pine tree. In other words, you collect the crude gum from the living pine tree and that crude gum is distilled into turpentine and rosin.

Senator MILLIKIN. What does that have to do with "naval stores"? Mr. OETTMEIER. The term dates way back to the early days of this country, Senator, in the days of the wooden ships when they used the tar and pitch to calk the vessels. They obtained naval stores-I think

they started in North Carolina-and carried them back to England and used them for calking.

Senator MILLIKIN. Thank you very much, and pardon the interruption.

Mr. ÕETTMEIER. That is about all, gentlemen. I do not want to take any more of your time. I hope you will consider that very important phase of this bill; that is, the definition of an "employee" as it is listed in H. R. 6000, because under present circumstances I am quite certain that the large operators why buys the timber, who manufactures the timber into lumber or into paper, is going to be extremely handicapped in buying from the small timberland owner. I might add, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that the organization of which I am president, represents throughout the South practically 200,000,000 acres, and again using that same figure of 76 percent of the ownership in the hands of small owners, that is, below 5,000 acres, whose acreage averages 62, that is a lot of people who are dependent upon the forest for a livelihood. But further than that, the Nation is depending on the man who ownes the forest to grow a better crop of timber.

As has been repeated here on numerous occasions in the past, it has been claimed that we have been depleting the forest faster than we are growing the timber. We have a good start toward solving that problem.

I think we made more progress in the South in the last 20 years than has been made anywhere else in the Nation as far as timbergrowing is concerned. We have gone from practically no forestry program, from burned over forestry land, where you could see a cow for 2 miles, to the point where today you could not see a cow over 50 or 100 feet off the road, due to heavy stands of timber.

Gentlemen, we have made progress in the South in the forestry program, and we do not want to run the risk of any legislation like this upsetting that. I think we should go back to the original bill, the common-law practice of who is an employer and who is an employee, and I think that will serve the purpose.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Oettmeier.

Mr. OETTMEIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The next witness will be Mr. P. M. Harbert. We are glad to have you with us, sir. Will you kindly identify yourself for the record?

STATEMENT OF P. M. HARBERT, SAVANNAH, TENN., DIRECTOR, FOREST FARMERS ASSOCIATION

Mr. HARBERT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: I am P. M. Harbert from Savannah, Tenn.-not Georgia. I am the Tennessee director for the Forest Farmers Association. It has only one director and it happens to be myself.

I have been asked to come before this committee to represent the small landowners; that is, the individual landowners of this association; that 76 percent of which Mr. Oettmeier spoke. I live in the northern edge of what is called the short-leaf pine. It comes out of Alabama and Mississippi up into Tennessee only a short distance. Much of our land there is hardwood, but short-leaf pine grows there readily. I am right at the corner of Alabama and Mississippi on the