In order that the farmers may be able to finance the camp cost, the bill authorizes the land banks and the banks for cooperatives of the Farm Credit Administration to make loans on proper terms to individual farmers and associations of farmers, for the amortized purchase and construction of such camps. It is well to point out that such labor association camps constitute a convenient method of housing workers in which small producers can participate. Most larger growers provide their own housing centers for their workers.

The bill provides for cooperation with the State employment offices in routing suitable non-farm applicants for jobs to farm employers. It also provides that when domestic workers are not available for certain special jobs, permits may be obtained from the immigration authorities and State Department, for farmer employers, at their own expense, to recruit and transport foreign workers to their operations on temporary entrance permits, and return such workers at the expiration of their agreement, to their native land.

The National Council of Farmer Cooperatives endorses the principles, objectives and type of program organization proposed in this bill as a necessary contribution of our extension services to economic farm production.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Thye, do you have any questions?

Senator THYE. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Riggle.

We have next Mr. Fred Bailey of the National Grange.

STATEMENT OF FRED BAILEY, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL GRANGE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. BAILEY. For the record, my name is Fred Bailey and I am representing the National Grange.

We support the objectives of S. 1334 but do not favor the bill in its present form. We would suggest several amendments which we consider major ones to the bill.

In support of continuation of a farm labor program in the Department of Agriculture, we believe that this necessity now exists and will continue to exist for some years.

The extent to which operation of the emergency farm labor program contributed to the tremendous increase in agricultural production in the past 4 years cannot be estimated accurately, but it has no doubt been considerable.

The shooting war is over but the emergency which made necessary the great increase in United States food production continues. Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson estimates that heavy volume of exports of foods may have to be continued for another 3 to 5 years.

The success of the emergency farm labor program has been due to two major factors. First, the recruiting and placement of additional workers and, second, to the more efficient use of available labor for farm work. Both remain, in peacetime, important factors in maintaining an efficient and productive agricultural plant in this country. Because of the seasonal and specialized nature of our farming operations, we will not have, under a hit-or-miss system, an adequate supply of farm labor available in all localities at all times. Such a system is both inefficient and wasteful of our labor resources.

We need to make the most efficient use of our available farm-labor supply, first, by organized planning and direction and, second, by training to obtain additional skills and thus make more efficient use of the labor which is available.

To accomplish both of those aims we should continue the farmlabor program under the direction of the Department of Agriculture at the national level and within the States, we should have public or private agencies qualified to perform the service at State and local levels.

The land-grant colleges and the extension service have done a remarkably efficient job in carrying out the emergency program, although it has largely been outside the educational field for which they were created. We would not like to see this program imposed upon those agencies as a permanent function.

The Grange concurred in turning over to the extension service some emergency functions on a temporary basis during the depression and during the war, but always has insisted that these emergency functions be considered on a temporary basis, and that the true purpose of the extension service be preserved. We made these reservations when labor placement was first transferred to the extension service and have consistently maintained that we want it removed when and if a better method can be devised.

The National Grange, at its Portland, Oreg., national session last November, adopted a resolution declaring that "we favor the farmlabor program in the future being continued under the administration of the United States Department of Agriculture."

We believe that in most States the extension service is at present the agency best equipped to handle farm-labor placement at the present time, but we also believe that in most States it will be possible to develop an independent agency such as has been done in a number of States.

We urge the Congress to leave the decision as to the agency to handle the program in the States to the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture and that he should be charged with responsibility of placing the program with the State agency best qualified to do the job.

The present bill would not do that. It would, in effect, tie his hands by making it mandatory that he operate through the Federal Extension Service at the national level and through the land grant colleges if they elect to handle the program, at the state level.

In the bill before us, S. 1334, we would make several changes. Section 1, we would change entirely and substitute as follows:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of Agriculture (hereinafter called the "Secretary") is authorized and directed to enter into agreement with appropriate agencies in the several States for effectuating the purposes of this Act in their respective States.

He shall enter into such agreements with such State agency as may have been created or designated for such purpose by the State legislature (hereinafter called "other designated State agency"), or, in the event the State legislature has not taken such action, then the Secretary shall enter into an agreement with such other State agency, public or private, in such State as he determines is competent to carry out the purposes of this Act therein (hereinafter also referred to as "other designated State agency").

The reason for the suggested change is this: When the farm labor program was begun in 1943, the Federal Extension Service and the State extension service were the logical agencies to handle this program. We favored to put it into those agencies on the emergency basis only. We have always believed that the Extension Service was an information agency and was only operated as such.

The Extension Service has done an excellent job by and large, in spite of the fact that many of those agents did not want to handle it and did not want to give up the time from their other duties. In many instances they have had to give up their work entirely to handle the workers in the rush season. That has been a handicap that we do not want to continue.

Another thing that we do not like is that it has been financed from the Federal Treasury. We believe that the States and counties should share in the responsibility and the financial contribution toward continuation of a farm labor program if we are to continue one. I do not know whether that should be a direct matching basis, dollar for dollar, or whether we should take into consideration the supply of labor and what is needed, but there certainly should be a provision that the States will bear a portion of the cost with whatever agency is designated by the Secretary of Agriculture.

In some States, at least in California, for example, the creation of a State agency has been accomplished to handle this. We believe that other States will follow suit in creating special agencies to handle it and relieving the Extension Service and we hope that this act will be amended to do that.

Senator THYE. Mr. Bailey, could you see any relationship between the employment office and this office that would deal with the farm employment or farm help employment? Could you see the possibility of the employment office of which there is one in every State, and sub-offices within the States, setting up a farm help office or a division that would devote all of its attention to farm help?

Mr. BAILEY. I could see the possibility of it, Senator, but I do not believe it would work out practically.

Senator THYE. Why not?

Mr. BAILEY. For this reason, that the principal job of the Employment Service has been to supply industrial labor and they are located in industrial centers and not in agricultural centers.

Senator THYE. I might bring this thought out, that insofar as the help is concerned you may have it from the extension department, because you will find that the extension office is somewhere in the same city where your employment office is located.

Mr. BAILEY. They are in direct contact with the farmer.

Senator THYE. But the two offices are there. When you say the one is located in an industrial city and the other one is more or less confined to the farm area, I am only mindful, that in many cases right here in a city is an employment office and in a city not over 5 miles away is the extension office. The Extension Service has its personnel dealing with farm help and down here in the employment office is a man dealing with all kinds of workers, from a cabinet maker to a plumber, from a plumber to a machinist to a railroad man, or any of those jobs. For that reason I am asking whether in your opinion the employment office could say, "We are opening up an office here

which will render service in the employment field for agriculture," and that Mr. Brown, or whatever his name might be, is going to be in charge of this work and will contact the county agent or any other agency in the rural area of the State in order to ascertain what the seasonal demands will be in that community.

That would be his sole responsibility out of that office. I am wondering, if it could be done in that manner?

Mr. BAILEY. Senator, I do not believe that it would work out practically for several reasons. One, that there has to be a complete familiarity with the agricultural problem by the people handling this agricultural labor. I do not believe we would get that through an industrial office.

Senator THYE. I am assuming that the man put in charge of that field of activity would be familiar with the farm problem. Supposing you established the employment office for the State of California, in Sacramento, where there are men in the field for almost any conceivable activity and that office branches out and establishes an agricultural employment division within the employment office.

Mr. BAILEY. And it becomes immediately dominated by the industrial aspect of it.

Senator THYE. What I am trying to say is that the section or division devoted to the agricultural labor problem would function in a perfectly normal manner under the roof of the Employment Office, and would be operated the same as under the roof of the Extension Department.

Mr. BAILEY. Theoretically it is practical, and it is the most practical way to handle it. But practically it has never worked out that way for one reason. As I understand it the labor unions are strenuously opposed to our continuing the farm-labor program; they want to put it back in the Employment Service. An obvious reason is that labor expects that workers will be unionized on the farm. They will use those offices as they have in the past to ascertain that man's connection with a union and they will use pressure to keep him in a position where there is a union. They are not inclined to let him go to work. When a man comes in and says, "I want work," they tell him, "Wait a minute, Bill Smith is going to be opening up next week and you will have work with him." That has been our experience.

I agree with you that there should be complete liaison, complete cooperation, between the agricultural placement service and the State Employment Office.

Senator THYE. The two must be in close cooperation or the one defeats the other. The only reason for the Employment Service in the field of agriculture is that you are affected by conditions in certain sections of the Nation where there is great demand for help.

Mr. BAILEY. Yes.

Senator THYE. We have already had evidence. When some zone demands help, whatever section it happens to be, it must draw from some other section where there is not a seasonal demand. This involves a problem of transportation and, occasionally, of housing and so forth. I am wondering if these agencies cannot be developed so that the proper atmosphere of these employment offices would be such as to make possible a combination of effort. The two divisions must correlate their activities, because if they do not they defeat the purpose of the entire employment activity.

Mr. BAILEY. Senator, I believe this bill provides for that by calling on the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Labor to get together and coordinate their efforts.

There is one other difficulty which I would like to point out and that is this: The farm labor is both seasonal and migratory and it shifts more rapidly.

Senator THYE. That is what I had in mind when I referred to the seasonal demand in various sections of the country.

Mr. BAILEY. There has to be some agency set up to handle that flow. The employment office is a more local problem within an area and does not shift them from one area to another to meet seasonal and sectional needs.

For that reason we believe another organization closely coordinated with the Extension Service should handle the farm program. It is necessary that we have seasonal labor that flows from one part of the country to the other.

Under a hit-or-miss system, we are going to have a lot of workers hunting around the country when there are not jobs filled in agriculture. There has to be some simple method of doing that. We believe it would best be done through an agency in the Agriculture Department.

As stated in section 2 (a), one of the things that this State agency, would do is to collect, publish, and disseminate information with' respect to the supply and demand for agricultural workers in the States and other related information. We would recommend deleting that for the reasons that the functions we desire are covered in other parts of that section and I will point them out in a moment. Subsection (b) reads as follows:

assisting, by appropriate studies, demonstration, or other educational methods, farmers and agricultural workers in the adoption of improved practices and facilities for performing farm-labor operations;

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That seems to me to be a major function of the Extension Service as its regular function and not as its emergency function at all. They perform that work in too many areas.

It may be necessary and the States may desire to set up offices in areas where needed to train them in packing peaches or something of that type but I would not like to see that carried on as a major national field. It belongs to the Extension Service and we would like to keep it there.

Part (c) reads:

Facilitating the orderly intrastate and interstate movement of agricultural workers.

That is a major function which we would like to see continued through the Agricultural Department and State agencies. That is a function we need; that is, to facilitate the orderly movement of those people and that is necessary.

Part (c) continues as follows:

by making available information with respect to the supply and demand for agricultural workers

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We feel that can be done by a State agency in cooperation with it. The other provisions of the section I do not need to comment on.