Mr. WILLIAMS. Just at the close of the hearing yesterday, if you will recall, you were asked to put into the record the agricultural commodities which you had, showing their relation to parity at the present time those parity prices on the agricultural products that you had prepared. I understood that you had your statement ready. Mr. O'NEAL. I asked the Department to give me a more complete list, and I do not know whether I have it here. I am sure Dr. Tolley can give it to you.

They got it for me this morning. Here it is. It has parity prices and actual prices. It has a very long list of commodities here. I think it completely covers the field of major commodities.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Does that show the parity price of those commodities today or of recent date?

Mr. O'NEAL. September 15, 1941; yes, sir.

Mr. WILLIAMS. And that is the parity as computed by the Agriculture Department?

Mr. O'NEAL. Yes; actual price and parity price and percentage of parity.

Mr. WILLIAMS. That covers a broad field, if not all of the agricultural commodities. Perhaps it does not cover all.

Mr. O'NEAL. Just the major ones. I can read them to you.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I do not care to take up time with the details, but I think it should go into the record.

The CHAIRMAN. It may be inserted in the record. It should go into the record.

(The document referred to is as follows:)

Average prices received by farmers for farm products, United States, Sept. 15, 1941 [U. S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service]

Average prices received by farmers for farm products, United States, Sept. 15, 1941—

Continued

Lambs, per 100 pounds.

Based on averages of reports from 11,594 correspondents. Reports are weighted according to relative im. portance of price-reporting districts and States in computing United States averages.

United States parity prices for farm products, Sept. 15, 19411

1 Open-market price exclusive of contract sales.

Base prices are averages for the crop years 1919-28. Taxes and interest not considered in determination of parity prices of commodities when using post-war base.

3 Adjusted for seasonal variation.

Weighted average price of milk, wholesale, and milk equivalent price of butter and butterfat.

Base prices are averages for the crop years 1934-38.

64300-41-pt. 2- -30

United States parity prices for farm products, Sept. 15, 1941-Continued

Hay, per ton

Wool, per pound...

Sugarcane, per ton 6.

Sugar beets, per ton o.

dollars. 16. 26 ..cents 25. 1 _dollars.. 5. 11 .do.... 7.54

Base price for the crop marketing season. Sugarcane for sugar, two States, Louisiana and Florida.

United States prices received by farmers, percentage of parity, Sept. 15, 1941 1

1 Does not include agricultural conservation, parity adjustment, or conditional payments. Open market price exclusive of contract sales.

3 Base prices are averages for the crop years 1919-28. Taxes and interest not considered in determination of parity prices of commodities when using post-war base.

4 Adjusted for seasonal variation.

Weighted average price of milk, wholesale, and milk equivalent price of butter and butterfat.
Base prices are averages for the crop years 1934-38.

Mr. O'NEAL. This shows how varied it is. It includes hops. We do not think much about hops, even when we drink a glass of beer. We have in here sweet potatoes, peanuts, apples, butterfat, milk equivalent, chickens, turkeys, eggs, hogs, beef cattle, veal calves, lambs, all sorts of tobacco, hay, wool, sugarcane, sugarbeets, and so forth and so on. There are a lot of commodities.

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. O'Neal, your statement has not startled me in the least bit. I am glad to know that the farmers of the Nation have someone to speak for them and put the language in the form in

which you up against.

have done, to educate further our people as to what we are

I wish to ask you some questions to get clearer in my own mind what you and your organization prefer or wish or hope for in connection with this attempt to control inflation.

The first point is this. If this committee should gear itself down to going along with a rather strict attempt to control inflation, prevent it, hold it down as best we can, will you positively and absolutely insist upon a 110 percent of parity instead of parity?

Mr. O'NEAL. Yes; sir, for the reason that all we want is parity, but there is no possible way, if you just put the parity concept in there, that you get the farmer parity.

I can illustrate that very easily by the way in which the Commodity Credit Corporation has worked with its 85 percent loans. In other words, in some areas the loan value is away up here; in other areas it is here.

I remember the discussion on that in the Corn Belt.

Someone said

You ought to carry out the mandate of Congress and have 85-percent parity on corn, no matter where it is grown.

There is disagreement there. There is one loan rate in Houston, Tex.; there is another one at Montgomery, Ala.; and there is another loan rate at Charlotte, N. C. In other words, to get the parity, the mandate of Congress is 85 percent.

Now, in order for the administration to carry that out, you have to have these differentials, and we certainly do not want-and you want to think about that as a committee-to displace the legitimate commercial agencies who have been effectively handling our agricultural commodities. In other words, we do not want the Government of the United States to go into business any more than it is necessary where business is efficient.

I recall very distinctly when Secretary Wallace asked me to advise him as to the export subsidy on cotton and how to handle it and how to have it exported.

I said to him at the time, "We have firms like Anderson and Clayton and McFadden in Philadelphia. They are men who can handle that efficiently and do the job.'

I am delighted that the Commodity Credit Corporation and other agencies are using private agencies where they are efficient.

Mr. CRAWFORD. In other words, you feel that those private agencies which have grown up over the decades can do this job on a basis which perhaps would be more satisfactory and less expensive to the farm population than would the creation of governmental agencies doing away with those old establishments?

Mr. O'NEAL. Assuredly.

Mr. CRAWFORD. I wonder if it would be asking too much to have you put in the record as good a support as you can on that argument from the viewpoint of your organization, and put in language calling for 110 percent of parity as set forth in the bill, instead of 100 percent, so that we would have that justification before us here in executive session as well as on the floor, if that has to be decided on the floor.

Mr. O'NEAL. I thank you, Congressman. I did that quite at length. We worked out a statement on the 110 percent in here.'

1 See p. 1473, infra.

Miss SUMNER. Mr. O'Neal, I was going to ask you for the same thing, so if you can elaborate on that, I will appreciate it.

Mr. O'NEAL. We will be delighted to do that.

Mr. CRAWFORD. What I want is something with which I can go to my friend from Massachusetts, Mr. Healey, or Mr. Gifford, and say, "Now, there is not anything in this bill that upsets your labor arrangements in the statutes. There is not anything in this bill that upsets the policy established by Congress of 100 percent parity."

Then if he says, "Well, look at the extra 10 percent," I want to be able to say to him, "Here is what the extra 10 percent is, and this is from the conception of the American Farm Bureau Federation." That is the practical thing I am getting at.

Miss SUMNER. What I am particularly interested in, in addition to what he said, would be the periodic variations that you usually experience in prices. In 1940 we attempted to put it in such and such a price, but it varied so much.

Mr. O'NEAL. Yes.

You cannot just fix the price at parity for the farmer that way. If you are going to give the farmer parity, you have got to get that leeway in there, and you have a fine illustration in the commodity loan at 85 percent and how that works.

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Tolley may be able to give some further support to this, so when he comes up, if he comes up, we will interrogate him on it.

Now, on page 2 of your formal statement, under item 6, you sayTo this end, we recommend (a) the consideration of a plan of enforced savings. I want to get you to say a little more about that, because of your high position in agriculture.

As I view this situation, and as I expressed myself rather forcibly before the Ways and Means Committee on this particular point as early as last January 29, one or two things will have to occur in the immediate future. We either pour billions of dollars of additional new issues, nonrefunding, into the portfolios of the commercial banks and expand the deposits and add to the inflationary dynamite, or we choose the route of enforced savings. I am giving you my rough, boiler-room opinion in advance of my question.

How far would you, as a spokesman for the Farm Bureau, go on that program?

Mr. O'NEAL. Well, I agree with you. That is the reason in making my sixth-point recommendation here.

I would like to have been here to have heard Henry Morgenthau, and I would like to have been here to have heard Mr. Eccles. delighted to see the attitude that they want individual ownership of bonds and do not want banks to buy bonds.

I think it would be a tragedy if the banks took great blocks of defense bonds again. It will certainly help complete inflation.

The distinguished Congressman from Massachusetts was talking about the enforced-saving provision. I think a way could be worked out in which the inflationary wage and the inflationary income could be invested by individuals. I think that is the way it should be done. Social security is a very funny thing. We worked on the social security part. I remember the President asked me, when the bill was first considered a long time ago, if there was some way to get the 1 See pp. 1473-1482, infra.