TABLE 14.-Prices for feeder cattle at Kansas City, and shipments of feeder cattle from 5 markets, June 1950 to date

1 Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, South St. Paul, and Sioux City.

Compiled from data of Livestock Branch, Production and Marketing Administration.

TABLE 15.-Gains and feed consumption reported by Illinois cattle feeders, average 1946-47 to 1948-49

Source: Compiled from Eleventh Annual Report of Feeder Cattle, University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, September 1950.

TABLE 16.-Calculated costs of cattle feeding at January-April 1951 average Illinois prices for feed

1 Includes costs of labor overhead, interest on investment, transportation and marketing, and death loss; and credits for manure and gain on hogs.

? For gains as shown in Table 15.

FIGURE 5

MEAT AND INCOME

Retail Value of Consumption and Income, Per Person

The CHAIRMAN. We will recess until 2:30 p.m.

(Whereupon, at 12:30 p. m., a recess was taken until 2:30 p. m. of the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

Mr. Woods, will you come up, and identify yourself for the record?

STATEMENT OF TIGHE E. WOODS, HOUSING EXPEDITER, ACCOMPANIED BY MILTON DAVIS AND ED DUPREE, GENERAL COUNSEL

Mr. WOODS. I am Tighe Woods, the Housing Expediter. This is Mr. Dupree, general counsel, and Mr. Milton Davis of my staff. The CHAIRMAN. Will you go ahead, sir, and read your statement, unless you desire to summarize it?

Mr. Woods. It is not terribly long, Senator. I would just as soon read it if I have permission.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.

Mr. Woods. The outbreak of the Korean conflict, and the mobilization program which we have been forced to undertake, make rent control a continuing national responsibility. The extension and strengthening of Federal rent control is vitally necessary in order to achieve over-all economic stabilization, to insure the production of materials for defense, and to protect military personnel from exorbitant rents during the present national emergency.

Rent is a major item in the family budget. As Mr. Wilson and Mr. Johnston have already testified, there can be no stabilization of the cost

of living and hence no successful over-all stabilization unless rents are stabilized. In the absence of controls, rents would rise on a broad front. The supply of rental housing is still inadequate. The 1950 census reported a vacancy rate of only 1.1 percent for nonseasonal nondilapidated dwelling units offered for rent. In the course of housing surveys in 100 cities during the last half of 1950, we contacted 1,251 leading realtors and managers of apartment houses and projects. They had 231,720 rental units under their management. Less than two-thirds of 1 percent of these units were vacant.

With so little vacant housing available, the stage is set for a sharp rise in rents unless controls are continued and authority for recontrol is authorized. Rents have already begun to rise in some decontrolled cities. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that

In nine areas where rents have been uncontrolled percent of all rental units have experienced rent increases

from 28 to 70 The aver

age rise in rents since mid-1949 for the nine decontrolled cities was 19.8 percent. In contrast, the cities which remained under control rose an average of 3.5 percent.

These surveys were made several months ago. In the months ahead, purchasing power will continue to expand as hours of work are increased and additional workers are drawn into the labor force. cannot help but increase the pressure on rents.

This

As Mr. Wilson and Mr. Small have already pointed out, authority to stabilize rents is also essential to the successful prosecution of our industrial expansion and military procurement programs. In addition, as General Myers, Assistant Secretary for Air Stuart testified before the House, and Mr. Small has testified here, stabilization of rents is desperately needed to protect military personnel and their families in areas where training camps and bases are being reactivated or expanded.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you mind stating for the record where those installations are?

Mr. Woods. Yes, Senator, I would be happy to. I may want to refer to them a little later, but I will see that they are inserted in the record. (The information referred to follows:)

The material requested concerning rent increases near military installations has already been submitted for the record by the Department of Defense, and will be found beginning on page 428.

We are submitting for the record the attached photostats of a few of the many newspaper reports and letters which have come to our attention concerning exorbitant rents around military installations and in other defense areas.

[From the Chicago (Ill.) Daily Tribune, Friday, December 29, 1950] HOMES SCARCE, RENTS SOAR IN CAMP POLK AREA-$20 AND $25 UNITS JUMP TO $90 A MONTH

(By Clay Gowran, Chicago Tribune Press Service)

CAMP POLK, LA., December 28-Civilian property owners in small towns around this big Army camp are making rich profits from soldiers ready to pay almost any price for housing for their wives and children.

Unkempt little houses and so-called apartments which went begging in Leesville and New Llano at $20 and $25 a month until Camp Polk was reopened last August are now earning up to $90 a month for their owners. And, if present tenants are driven out by the smells and the drabness, hundreds more are on the waiting lists.