Mr. BROOKHART. Yes. I want this committee to repeal it. It is a bogus and I will show you just how much of a bogus it is. It is not half of parity. I will show it to you. I will do that again out of the bulletins of the Agriculture Department itself. Mr. WILLIAMS. Isn't that what the farmers of the country have been striving for and begging for all these years? Mr. BROOKHART. John Simpson, the one farm leader who had this farm problem figured out, went before the Senate committee with me at the time to oppose it. Some of these other farm organizations have taken patronage appointments rather than the income of the farmers of the United States, and I know that is true in my State. Mr. WILLIAMS. It has been almost a universal cry, so far as I have been able to ascertain. All they are asking for is parity. Mr. BROOKHART. If that is so, why did they defeat Secretary Wallace by 63,000 in Iowa last year and that after Willkie went to Des Moines and endorsed Wallace's policies? I say if Willkie had condemned Wallace's policies and had got the facts of this thing and presented them to the farmers, his majority would have been 163,000 and more, too, because the farmers had no choice as to which way to vote after his endorsement. The farmers know about this thing and are against it, and that is why they lost all the agriculture States in the North in this last election, too. Mr. WILLIAMS. You think these representatives here have not represented them, then? Mr. BROOKHART. I do. I am not particularly blaming them, because you did not have the figures. I was fooled by this for a long time. I did not have any figures when I went before the committee with John Simpson. They have been worked out since, so I know exactly what it is now. I did not know then. The first time they came out was in 1935, and here I have this bulletin of the A. A. A. itself, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, "Agriculture's Share in the National Income, October 1935." I wish I had enough of these bulletins to go around, but they are out of print. They are hard to get. I think you ought to have this printed again, though. On page 8, it shows that in 1909 there were 32,000,000 farmersjust about the same as there are now; the farm population has not changed much since 1909-and the whole population was 89,882,000. The per capita income of the whole population, farmers included, was $294. (See table 90.) Here is another column that gives the farm per capita income separate: $156 against $294 for the whole population, farmers included. If the farmers got only $156 out of that $294, the rest of the 89,000,000 people, about 57,000,000 of them, got more than the $294. I figured out that proportion. That is not shown here. You have to figure that out, but I used to be a school teacher, so I can figure that much. When I got it figured out for the 6 years 1909 to 1914, the percapita income averaged on this table $159 for the farmers and $396 for the nonfarm population. Mr. WILLIAMS. Let me see if I get your philosophy clear. Is it your contention that there ought to be an equal per capita income by groups? TABLE 90.-National income per capita and agriculture's per capita contribution Mr. BROOKHART. Well, I finally put it down that the farmers ought to have 20 percent, although they are 25 percent of the people, because they do not carry 25 percent of the capital, only 14 percent of the capital. That was my estimate to you in the beginning here. I only feel that if they had got the prices to which they are entitled, if they got 40 cents for cotton, which I say you are entitled to get because of the work that goes into cotton, and if we had like prices for other agricultural products, your farmers would have today 25 percent of the property value of the United States. On that basis I say the justice of a per capita income- Mr. WILLIAMS. I was just wondering if you were going to carry out that philosophy and contend that each group in our economy should have the same per capita income, regardless of their number and regardless of what they produce and what they do. Mr. BROOKHART. If they did the same kind of work and had the same amount of capital, yes. That is the answer to that. Mr. WILLIAMS. And were equally capable and all were equal in energy and ability. Isn't that carrying socialism to the very nth degree? Mr. BROOKHART. Well, I never get scared by names. Mr. WILLIAMS. Isn't that it? Mr. BROOKHART. We are half Socialists and Communists and always have been in the United States, so far as we are concerned. If you want to argue that out, I will be glad to argue it out. Mr. WILLIAMS. I just want to get your philosophy, if that is it. Mr. BROOKHART. I have great faith in the Government. I believe in it. I believe it can do things better than anybody else. So I do not get scared when anybody calls me Socialist, Communist, Bolshevik. or whatever they want to call me. The CHAIRMAN. If I am not mistaken, there has been a call of the House. Let us recess for 30 minutes and come back at 3:50. (After a recess the following occurred:) The CHAIRMAN. Senator Brookhart, you may proceed with your statement. Mr. BROOKHART. Mr Chairman, I believe at the time of the recess I was saying to you that the 1909-14, under the old bulletin of October 1935 per capita income of the farmer was $159 on an average and the per capita income of the entire nonfarm population, unemployed. poorhouse, and all, averaged $396. Now, that is on this bulletin of October 1935. A new bulletin is just out. It came out within the last few days. since I even wrote the resolution that I intend to submit to you. and that is changed somewhat, but it is a good deal worse than it was under the old bulletin. The change is made this way. Under the old bulletin there is included in that per capita income of the farmers whatever the farmers earn in factories or working off the farms; and there is a good deal of that in New England and the East particularly. In this new bulletin that is just out, that is subtracted from it. Now, I have a number of those new bulletins, which I will have passed around. On the first page of this bulletin you find a graph. income per capita on farms and not on farms, United States, 1910-14. index Nos. 1910–14 equal 100.1 That is a little different in time from the old bulletin, in that 1909 is left off, but in the old bulletin 1909 was just slightly less than an average of 5 years, so that it makes a little difference. Now, I want you to notice this graph, beginning with 1910. Take the black line on farms, and up to 1915 it runs along right close to that 100 line. That is a hundred percent. You will also notice that during those same 5 years the dotted line, not on farms, runs right along that same line. Hence they were equal at that time in per capita income, according to that chart, and that is what it says down below in the print, too. Now, where do they equal? Does that honestly show the situation in those years. In table 91 the second and third columns are the figures from which that graph is made. I asked them down at the Department of Commerce to be absolutely certain that those were the figures. There is the net income from agriculture per person on farms from 1910 to 1914. It is given as $139, $123, $135, $137, and $141. They add up to $675 for the 5 years. Divided by 5, you get the average. I put that in there in ink, $138, with the earnings in factories and outside the farm left out, which is the whole per capita income of the farmers in those magic years that were written into the law 3 times as parity with the nonfarm income. Now, look over at the nonfarm: $482, $468, $483, $521, $482, or $2,436 total. Divided by 5, it gives $487 average. 1 See chart 133, p. 1788. TABLE 91.-Income per farm, and income per person on farms and not on farms in the United States, 1910-40 Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Department of Agriculture, the farm income situation, August 1941. Net income from agriculture per farm is column (5), table 6, divided by number of farms, column (3), table 8. This includes the net income to farm operators and to laborers living on farms. 2 Income from agriculture per person on farms is net income, column (5), table 6, divided by number of persons on farms, column (1), table 8. Persons on farms include farm operators and their families, farm laborers and their families, and also some other persons living on farms. The total income per person living on farms is considerably larger than that from agriculture, as many receive income from nonfarm sources. Income per person not on farms includes non agricultural income and the income from agriculture received by persons not on farms, as indicated in column (3), table 6, divided by nonfarm population, column (2), table 8. The indicated income per person not on farms is slightly too large on account of the fact that some nonagricultural income is really paid to persons on farms. Averaging the net income from agriculture per person on farms (2) for the years 1910-14, and relating the income for each year to this average, provides a series of index numbers for use in comparison with income per person not on farms. Averaging the income per person not on farms (3) for the years 1910-14, and relating the income for each year to this average, provides a series of index numbers for use in comparison with income per person on farms. This provides the parity measure of the relation of the net income of individuals on farms from farm operations to the income of individuals not on farms as specified in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Mr. BROOKHART. How can any honest mind say that $138 per capita is parity with $487, when the farmers have at least 14 percent of all capital and are 25 percent of the people? Yet that is the bulletin of the Department itself. This is not the only place where they put out that bogus graph. Mr. CRAWFORD. May I interrupt you just a minute, Senator? Mr. BROOKHART. Yes. Mr. CRAWFORD. I suppose you want this shown correctly. You have a $3 error in that $138. Mr. BROOKHART. Maybe I have. Mr. CRAWFORD. I think that should be $135. Mr. BROOKKHART. Well, it is worse than I had it, then. Mr. CRAWFORD. That is right. You divide 5 into 675. It gives you 135. The CHAIRMAN. That is correct, Senator. You made the error against your own contention. Mr. BROOKHART. That is what I did. It is just like Mr. Willkie and Senator McNary were-against their own interests. I did not mean to have an error. Now, then, I want you to run down that per capita income through all those years and see how it runs. I want you to know that there is not any period since 1850 (see tables 90 and 92) and since 1910 (see chart 133), when the farmers got anything like a parity income in the United States, or even half of it. PERCENT 220 CHART 133 INCOME PER CAPITA. ON FARMS AND NOT INDEX NUMBERS (1910-14-100) On farms THE NET INCOME PER PERSON ON FARMS FROM FARMING FLUCTUATES MUCH |