find the situation different than it was when they signed up their contract.

Mr. POAGE. What did you do, Mr. Doggett, about those people in South Carolina when they came in and wanted to sign up for cotton, in these counties that have been put in this commercial corn area, did you advise them that they were going to have to be in compliance?

Mr. DOGGETT. Oh, yes. They were advised because they then knew. They knew prior to January 13 that they were a commercial corn county. Then the same rules applied to them that applied to the

others.

Mr. POAGE. You say they knew it. That is not what I asked you. I asked if you advised them. How did they know it?

Mr. DOGGETT. Yes; they knew it. The county committee had the information. It is in the contract.

Mr. POAGE. Did you tell them that? The mere fact that it is in the contract does not advise them of anything. You know if you have been in one of those county offices, when you go in to sign up that soil-bank contract, you do not read it. You have no opportunity to read it. As a practical matter it cannot be read because 50 other people are standing behind you and if you stop to read it you will be the man standing in the way of progress.

What I am asking is, Were those people actually and officially advised that this new contraption, putting them in the commercial corn area, had taken away from them certain rights they thought they had? Mr. DOGGETT. I am reasonably sure that they are. I am reasonably sure they are, I repeat. I cannot say every county office advised farmer of that fact.

every

Mr. POAGE. Were there any instructions to anybody to advise these people?

Mr. DOGGETT. That has been in the instruction ever since it started. Mr. POAGE. What has?

Mr. DOGGETT. That they must live within all of their allotments. There is no exception.

Mr. POAGE. I understand, that is in the law. That is not what I asked you. I asked if you sent out instructions to these county committees, in these 38 counties, that were different from those sent to anybody else, because they were faced with a different situation? We were not in the commercial corn area. We didn't bother about it, and nobody said anything about it. Did your people say anything about it in South Carolina.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I have in front of me a sample letter that was sent out to all of the farmers on the listing sheets within these two counties in South Carolina. I would like to read it.

Re: How Your Corn Allotment Affects You

Since this county has been determined to be a commercial corn county, it was necessary to establish a corn allotment for each farm in the county which has been growing corn in the past.

Corn is not subject to marketing quotas and if you exceed your corn allotment you will not be required to pay marketing quota penalties as in the case of tobacco, cotton, wheat, rice, and peanuts. The only penalty for exceeding your corn allotment is in connection with soil-bank programs and the pricecontrol program for corn.

If you participate in the soil-bank program and exceed any allotment established for your farm, including corn, you are not eligible to receive any payments under the soil-bank program. If you exceed your corn acreage allotment you may or may not be, at the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture, eligible

for price support on corn. However, you will not be denied price support on commodities other than corn because of overplanting your corn allotment.

If you have any questions regarding the effect which corn allotments have on your farming operations, please contact this office.

This was mailed out by the county committee.

Mr. MCMILLAN. When was that mailed?

Mr. POAGE. When was that mailed out?

Mr. WALKER. I do not have the date that it was mailed out. I can obtain that for you. This is a sample copy.

(The data referred to above is as follows:)

Note. This letter was mailed to farmers in Dillon County, January 30, 1958, and to Horry County, February 5, 1958. However, a similar notice was mailed to farmers in Horry County, on December 31, 1957.

Mr. MCMILLAN. That was sent to those in my district. I think I was the first one to begin registering complaints with you about it. I believe you stated in the meeting before my subcommittee the reason that you placed those two counties in the commercial corn area was that the Crop Reporting Service had some time during the past 10 years decided one township in each one of those counties that grew more corn, than they should.

Mr. WALKER. For these two counties the determination was based upon the estimates of production in 1956 and 1957. You see, they did not meet the requirements for inclusion in the commercial corn area on the 10-year basis. But on the other basis, which required an examination of current production of corn.

Mr. MCMILLAN. Has your Department taken into consideration the fact that those two townships that were designated, came within an area of the county that were quarantined since witchweed had been located?

Mr. WALKER. I didn't quite get that question.

Mr. MCMILLAN. Did your Department take into account certain areas in Dillon and Horry Counties were quarantined on account of finding witch weeds in those counties. I wonder if you people knew about this additional problem?

Mr. WALKER. I didn't. I am satisfied that those conducting the examination in the Department did not know about that.

Mr. MCMILLAN. I wanted to point that out. They were quarantined, those counties designated as such.

Mr. POAGE. It is quite clear these bills are not going to do what we thought they would do.

Mr. MCMILLAN. It will not in my two counties.

Mr. POAGE. The only place it will help is Mr. Ford's area where they grow winter wheat, but in other sections where they do not grow wheat it will not help.

Mr. JOHNSON. January 1 is past.

Mr. POAGE. What would the Department say about changing that date, so that it would affect these other counties?

Mr. COFFMAN. Of course, as Mr. Doggett explained earlier, they have not yet cleared a formal report on this bill, but I believe it is fair to say that the Department would oppose going any further than this on the basis that I stated earlier, I think that the Department feels that there is a reason for doing this for those producers who signed up the contract and then find that the situation is different than it was when they first signed their contracts. But I believe it

is fair to say that the Department feels that those farmers who have notice that they are in the commercial corn area and will have an allotment even though it is a new county, are really in no different situation than any of the other farmers who are in an older area.

Mr. POAGE. There is a different situation when you put counties in the commercial corn area who were not in it. Take the State of Iowa and the State of Illinois and the State of Indiana-when you made those commercial corn areas, there was no soil bank and they had nothing to lose by coming in the commercial corn area from the standpoint of not being able to plant their crops. It had no effect on them. When you are bringing counties in now it does have an effect on them. You are bringing in counties now that are just on the ragged edges, anyhow, that actually think they do not plant enough corn.

Every one of these counties that are involved are these low-cornproducing counties; every one of them is brought in because some community planted a certain amount of corn, but the counties themselves did not plant enough corn to become commercial. So they are just on the ragged edge of the definition. They have not been depend ent upon corn and are not dependent upon corn now.

Mr. McMillan points out two counties in South Carolina that canno1; even ship corn out, and yet you call them commercial although they cannot ship a bushel of corn out of the county.

Mr. MCMILLAN. I do not think they ever have sold a bushel outsid the county.

Mr. POAGE. Which is a rather strange situation. I do not mean to say that it does not comply with the existing law, but, certainly, you are faced with a different practical situation than when you included the State of Illinois, when you put them in commercial corn areas. You are in area where corn is not a major crop. Yet you are affecting their right to grow crops that are more important to them.

Mr. MCMILLAN. I think we import as much corn as we make.

Mr. POAGE. I am sure that is right. What I am saying is that from an equitable standpoint, not from a purely legal standpoint-from that standpoint you can do what you have, you have doubtless complied with the law-that is the only reason we are trying to talk about changing the law. Why should the Department be so stiff-necked about trying to get some relief for some people who do not want to be in the commercial corn area, anyhow? Why do you insist on bringing them in, anyhow? I know you have to do it unless we change the law. I am not arguing that point. But why are you objecting to changing the law? Why wouldn't you be willing to recommend that we leave all of these counties out?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, may I comment on that? The provisions of law with respect to including or excluding counties from the commercial corn producing area does not take into account at all whether the corn is sold, or whether it is fed.

Mr. POAGE. We understand that.

Mr. WALKER. It takes into account the fact that corn was produced.

Mr. POAGE. We understand that. But we do not know that has not been the case. We are asking why you object to taking it into consideration now. We understand the law is not flexible; we understand it is harsh; we understand the law is operating to the injury of

a lot of innocent people; and we wonder why the Department objects to changing the law so that it will not do that.

Who will be hurt by changing it?

Mr. WALKER. We delayed our document announcing the commercial corn area some 3 or 4 weeks, during which time we did our best to dig up information that would exclude these 2 counties in South Carolina and also Peach County in Georgia from the area, but we couldn't do it.

Mr. POAGE. You tried to do it?

Mr. WALKER. Yes; we tried.

Mr. POAGE. Now you find you didn't have the power to do it, but this committee has got the power to do it, at least, Congress has, but you won't recommend that we try to do the thing that you cannot do-to try to find a way to exclude these counties. You know that

we can pass a law to exclude them. We know it, too. You spent several weeks, you tell us, trying to find a way to exclude them, and you didn't find it. But you know the way right here. It won't take 5 minutes for the Department to tell this committee that you approve it. But no, you do not approve it. On the contrary, you are not willing for this committee to do what you have been trying to do for several weeks. It just does not make any sense to me. Let us find out why the Department objects to this committee doing a thing that they tried to do. What is the reason behind that?

Mr. HOEVEN. What difference will it make if we decide to do away entirely with the commercial corn area? What difference will it make?

Mr. WALKER. That wouldn't make any difference. In fact, that has been our recommendation, let us do away with the whole area.

Mr. POAGE. Why won't you recommend that we make these bills broad enough to do away with these restrictions in these counties? Let us find out why they are so unwilling to do away with it in this small area. They make the broad recommendation that we do away with the commercial corn area that has been in the President's message. You find after weeks of effort that you could not do it for these particular counties. But you simply tell us, the committee and the Congress, that the Department tried to take these people out. You could not do so under the law as it now stands. I think we can take them out. But Mr. Doggett shakes his head.

Mr. DOGGETT. Let us get the record straight. You are talking about one thing and the bill itself is talking about something else. This bill does not go

Mr. POAGE. We are talking about relief. We are talking about relief for these people. I do not think anybody cares how these people get it. They are hurting. I am not. It does not affect me in the least. But I see the injustice of the thing, so why not try to correct it?

Mr. DOGGETT. This bill applies only to soil bank and its effect on the soil bank. If you are talking about whether or not they come into commercial corn areas, this bill does not approve that even. That is an entirely different thing.

Mr. POAGE. Would you say that we leave them out of the commercial corn area?

Mr. DOGGETT. Would we not recommend that? We would have to, since we have asked that they all be taken out, all counties, everywhere, not just these 38.

Mr. POAGE. Well, if we get a bill up here taking the counties out by name, would you recommend that, if we did that?

Mr. DOGGETT. I would not know what the Department would do. That is clear out of my baliwick.

Mr. POAGE. What do you say, Mr. Walker?

Mr. WALKER. I do not know what the Department would do.

Mr. POAGE. I know, but what do you recommend?

Mr. WALKER. I am in no position to recommend anything until we get a bill and then we would have to prepare a report on it.

Mr. POAGE. All right; we will have to introduced another bill and call you back next week. That is all I know to do.

Mr. MCMILLAN. We had Mr. Walker down before our committee. When you were down before the committee last week, didn't we request you to draw a bill that would exclude these counties?

Mr. WALKER. I believe last week you recommended that cross compliance with respect to corn be suspended in 1958. That is, compliance with soil bank on cotton and tobacco as well as wheat would not be affected because of overplanting the corn allotment. I believe that was your recommendation.

Mr. COFFMAN. All under the soil bank. All having to do with the soil bank.

Mr. MCMILLAN. This bill does not do that.

Mr. COFFMAN. No; it does not. My understanding is that you wanted a draft of a bill which would go as far as the DepartmentMr. MCMILLAN. That is right.

Mr. COFFMAN. Would be willing to go in this direction. While there has been no formal report on this bill, yet I believe that the Department would oppose making this amendment go beyond the stage that it is in now. The chairman has suggested, I believe, an entirely different proposal which is just to exclude all of these counties from the commercial corn area, I presume, for price supports, soil bank, or what not. I do not believe any consideration has been given to that.

Mr. POAGE. Why not? You know what Mr. McMillan's trouble is. You understood the trouble in those counties. Why not come up with something that will remedy it? Rather than come up with something that changes the law but does not change the situation.

Mr. COFFMAN. I do not know that the Department agrees that his counties are any different from any others except that they are new. In other words, this thing applied last year as well as this year.

Mr. MCMILLAN. We didn't have cotton and tobacco in this. Mr. COFFMAN. There were cretain new counties last year in which we had this same problem, in some of the winter wheat areas. Mr. POAGE. Did they ask for any relief?

Mr. COFFMAN. I am merely saying that I am doubtful that the Department would concur in going any further than this bill.

Mr. MCMILLAN. Why don't you give us some reason why the Department opposed giving this proposed relief?

Mr. COFFMAN. I tried as best I could to transmit their thinking; that is, that these farmers can participate in the soil bank or not. They have still not signed up. They can grow the crop rather than put it into the soil bank and I think it is the view of the Department