Senator ANDERSON. When was this?

Mrs. BENNETT. This was February 18, 1958:

The time has come in the Columbia Basin for the irrigation districts to start representing the small farm and to turn a deaf ear to those who want more and more land. The average settler is perfectly satisfied with the law as it now stands in regards to the size of farms. It is a relatively few who still aren't happy, and want no limits.

But on strictly economic grounds, the 160-acre limitation was well chosen. The amount of irrigated acres needed to support a family growing fruit, for example, is estimated to range from 30 for oranges to 80 for figs; grains take the full 320 acres, and cotton is in between. If poorness of land or climate raises this figure, a real problem arises as to whether this is the place for investment of public funds as so small a proportionate return to so few people.

The question is raised as to the wide difference in returns between, for instance, the 80-day growing season of Montana, and the 350-day season of the Imperial Valley.

Is the intention, then, to more than quadruple the allowable acreage where necessary in order to create uniform income?

Senator ANDERSON. If you are trying to get to a family-sized farm, why would you not?

Mrs. BENNETT. We think it is bad to overcome this principle because some areas may be so poor and need so much that it would be best not to invest public funds in them because by so doing and opening the door to allow vast acreages per unit, you would be undercutting the family-size farm in areas where it can exist and does exist in this country on 320 acres.

Senator ANDERSON. But you do not want a family-size farm in this place where it can be done. You want to go to corporate farming? Mrs. BENNETT. No.

Senator ANDERSON. You must. You either want to farm by family or corporation.

Mrs. BENNETT. Perhaps farming is not feasible there if they need such vast amounts of land.

Senator ANDERSON. Not feasible. That is saying that a place where you have to run cows and need 40 acres to a cow should not be grazed?

Mrs. BENNETT. Grazing land does not need to be irrigated acres. A farm might have irrigated and nonirrigated acres.

Senator ANDERSON. Yes.

Mrs. BENNETT. It is the principle that we are interested in. We are afraid to have the door opened to have the vast areas taken over by the big outfits who can afford to pay for it.

Senator ANDERSON. If a farmer cannot exist on 320 acres of land, do not irrigate it at all?

Mrs. BENNETT. We do not say that. We might say that he could use land that is unirrigated along with his irrigated acres. We do say frankly in some areas it may be that farming is not economically feasible if it needs public subsidy for more land than can be used in other areas.

Senator ANDERSON. Yes, then you say do not irrigate. Do not use it for farming.

What do you use it for?

Mrs. BENNETT. I don't know.

Senator ANDERSON. Do you not think it is important?

Mrs. BENNETT. I think it is important. We think that more important is that the principle which upholds 160 acres per person, 320 acres for family, for family farming, which is the bulwark of the American farm economy, needs to be preserved at all costs.

Senator ANDERSON. You just got through saying that 30 acres is family farming for oranges.

Mrs. BENNETT. That is the point I was making. The point I was making is that you could have lots of good paying farms of less than that. The 320 seems to be a good ceiling and a good place to stop. Senator ANDERSON. But you cannot grow oranges in a month. Mrs. BENNETT. Then you should not.

Senator ANDERSON. Then you cannot make it on 320 acres of grass. What would you do with the land; just say this is wasteland?

Mrs. BENNETT. I am not going to hold myself up as an economic expert to indicate what ought to be done with lands all over the country, but it might be helpful for all of the people to have open

areas.

Senator ANDERSON. Making a sort of wilderness preserve?

Mrs. BENNETT. I am all for wilderness in some parts of the world. It is getting too civilized.

Senator ANDERSON. I am, too, in some parts of the world. But I do not want to relegate the whole State of Montana to wilderness.

What would you do with this land? If it takes 400 acres, you say put it back to wilderness.

Mrs. BENNETT. No. I don't know how to answer that exactly except to say that I think the Department of Agriculture and the various agencies which are constantly doing research what to develop in what areas will come up with answers that will make farming feasible in areas where you might need more for certain types of crops.

I believe that with irrigated and nonirragated acres and with children in the area in the family which allows even more acreage, that it would do. I think it would be more important to settle the problem for all of the people rather than the State of Montana.

I am not throwing Montana to the wilderness.

Senator ANDERSON. I thought it was perfectly safe. There is no one here from Montana right now.

Mrs. BENNETT. I think the people from Montana deserve to have their problem solved. I am not capable of solving it. More important is the principle for all of the farm families of the country which would be seriously jeopardized if corporate interests could buy them all out if they could get irrigated lands.

Senator ANDERSON. You think that a corporation is going to buy this 320 acres and farm it when the farmer cannot?

Mrs. BENNETT. The point is that they have already bought up large areas of arid lands, holding them for irrigation.

Senator ANDERSON. Where?

Mrs. BENNETT. There are places in California. San Joaquin Valley. Russell Gifford went in and developed 40,000 acres. He had no 160-acre limitation because he did not come to the Federal Reclamation Service. He did it himself.

Incidentally, he nearly went broke. His son sold it to Anderson Clayton for $712 million.

Senator ANDERSON. Do you like that pattern better than if they put an irrigation project in?

Mrs. BENNETT. No; I don't particularly like that pattern. This is a free country. I was coming to that in my testimony. Senator ANDERSON. That is what we thought it was. If it took 400 acres for a family, why can you not do it in this free country?

Mrs. BENNETT. There is nothing in the law that prevents a man from owning more acres. The point is that he cannot have federally subsidized irrigated acres, which means that he would have them at the expense of another fellow. This would make some kind of corporate farm which has a great many evils attendant with it.

Senator ANDERSON. You have me interested. You are national secretary of the National Sharecroppers. How many farms have you been on?

Mrs. BENNETT. I have been on quite a few farms. I do not know how many. I have been on a number of low-income farms in Georgia, Alabama, a few in the Midwest, Pennsylvania. I have been on some in the West. I don't call myself an expert. I am not a field secretary. I am trying to represent the interests of our members and contributors and board, who do feel this issue strongly.

Senator ANDERSON. If you got to the family-sized farm, you are not interested in sharecroppers, are you?

Mrs. BENNETT. We are. There are a few of them. They are within our concern. We like to see them either able to get a familysized farm and use it, or if that is impossible, provide them with Government vocational services so they can leave and support their families elsewhere.

Senator ANDERSON. What do you think a family-size farm is? Mrs. BENNETT. I think it varies from place to place.

Senator ANDERSON. I am trying to find out if you do not think a family-sized farm is one where a family could do the work? Mrs. BENNETT. Yes, that is part of it. And he lives on it. Senator ANDERSON. Where does the sharecropper come in? Mrs. BENNETT. The sharecropper is on its way out. Originally, when this organization started 20 years ago, it was to offer economic help to sharecroppers. That is an uneconomic, unsound social system that is out. There are problems attendant. It seems to be falling between the slats of the more vast problems the Government faces and we are concerned.

Senator ANDERSON. Do you think the mechanization of agriculture has anyhting to do with the outgoing of the sharecropper?

Mrs. BENNETT. Of course it has. The fact that mechanization has come in means that a farmer does not need as many sharecroppers. Senator ANDERSON. Does it mean that he has to use a larger acreage?

Mrs. BENNETT. Yes.

Senator ANDERSON. Now, we are getting somewhere on this acreage limitation.

Therefore, an acreage limitation put in in 1902 must still be applicable in 1958 ?

Mrs. BENNETT. Certainly, you change with the times.
Senator ANDERSON. But you?

Mrs. BENNETT. The Constitution was adopted a couple of hundred years ago and I think it is still a good document.

Senator ANDERSON. It is flexible though; it is not rigid.

Mrs. BENNETT. Sir, I think you have a good point. I do not wish to retreat from the principle of 320 acres per family. The very mechanization you talk about has made it possible for a family to live happily, and even with some leisure on a farm nowadays. In the old days, without mechanization, he had to work from dawn to dark and every one of his children did, and then he hardly made a living. Senator ANDERSON. Now you are talking about something I understand that you may not have experienced. It is a refreshing experience.

Mrs. BENNETT. I have read a good deal about this, sir, although I do not claim to have your vast knowledge.

Senator ANDERSON. I do not mean it that way. I mean if you had lived on one where the whole family had to work, you would be very happy in the mechanization.

Mrs. BENNETT. I have indeed. I do not want us to go back to using physical labor where it is not necessary just for its own sake. I think, as you say, mechanization makes it possible for a family to live on a farm and have much more of the good things of life than they did in the old days. We hope they still make the children carry out chores because that is good for the soul.

I think we are glad if they do not have to do as much backbreaking labor as in the past. That very mechanization makes it possible for a family unit to survive on a farm without needing as much hired help and more acreage and fertilizer and all the other things we are discovering.

Shall I go on?

Senator ANDERSON. Yes.

Mrs. BENNETT. Does this then apply also to unequal fertility of allotments of land within the same development?

Does the policy envisage a means of securing uniform income within the Imperial Valley itself as between the largest farm monopolists in the Nation and the small independent farmer who may be a neighbor?

A question also is raised as to democracy of procedure. Limitation seems a word of arbitrary character. Is it really?

In the first place, landownership is not limited. Not an acre of land is taken from anyone by the limitation policy. Many farms contain profitably both irrigated and unirrigated areas. What is limited is water, which is made available by the investment of public funds alone; that is, Federal subsidy is limited to 160 acres of irrigated land.

Senator ANDERSON. Inside an irrigated district, when you are down below the ditches, do you think that one piece is irrigated and the next piece unirrigated?

Mrs. BENNETT. I suppose there is some seepage and the other gets it.

Senator ANDERSON. I suppose they are all irrigated when you get inside a district. It is pretty difficult for a farmer inside a district to have irrigated and nonirrigated unless he has upland land above a ditch.

Mrs. BENNETT. Yes.

Senator ANDERSON. If he happens to be inside the Imperial Valley, would he be able to say, "I choose to irrigate this 320 acres and leave this unirrigated"? The cost alone would make it impossible. Therefore, he pays the extra penalty.

Mrs. BENNETT. It may be that there is higher grazing land that is not irrigated that is adjacent.

Senator ANDERSON. Yes. There is in the Columbia River project. It was so drawn out. When the Columbia River Basin project was laid out many years ago, I believe the original areas were about 150 or so acres, of which probably 50 or 60 acres was grazing land, and only little was required in irrigated land, but it did not work out that

way.

Mrs. BENNETT. Second, the people most directly involved, land working farmers, support the policy overwhelmingly. Their votes have said so in elections over a long period of years, as the Bureau of Reclamation has pointed out in challenging the contention that the law had never worked. It has been working for more than half a century, and the idea that the only alternative to executive discretion is endless congressional legislation almost on each individual allotment is absurd. Congress has set general policy effectively. It is the proposed changes that bring up questions of unworkability, ineffectiveness, and Executive orders.

Third, there is a procedural danger involved. The proposal is being made that responsibility for adherence to or change in basic public policy should be taken out of the hands of the Congress and delegated to the Secretary of the Interior. This is the substance of S. 2541.

If good enough reasons can be shown to convince the Congress that the traditional public water policy of the United States, oriented toward safeguarding the family farm, should be changed, let the Congress change it. Or if, as we believe, enforcement of this policy is more urgent today than ever before in its history, let Congress affirm it. But this is not the kind of question that should be shunted off to any single executive appointee, who would have to face continuous and highly organized pressure, regardless of his personal worth and abilities.

In summary:

1. Congress has the right and should not delegate the responsibility for controlling policy over public investment and Federal subsidy. 2. The present public water policy, of encouragement to the familysized, 160-acre farm, should be continued.

3. Attempted inroads on that policy, whose effect would be the subsidization of corporate interests, should be defeated.

The ultimate justification of public expenditure must be public good.

Senator ANDERSON. Let me say, Mrs. Bennett, I am glad you came here as a witness. I am glad you come in and say what you believe, even if I disagree with it.

Mrs. BENNETT. We appreciate that right and the opportunity, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ANDERSON. You are obviously an intelligent person. I am glad you came down.