ing things. We sent the bill down for a report in March of this year. In June we received an unfavorable report. I would like to read from 1 or 2 paragraphs:

The Department favors the objectives of H. R. 8324 but opposes its enactment. Where does that leave us?

Senator CAPEHART. Well, presumably, you are in the same position as was the Senate because they told the Senate the same thing, and yet the committee reported it out unanimously and it passed the Senate by a vote of 81 to zero, and no one on the Senate floor said a single word against the legislation.

Mr. ABERNETHY. I am not being critical, but I am trying to show you what we are up against.

The Department may be right about this; I do not know.

Here is what they say in the report. This is not the report the chairman was reading from earlier:

The establishment of an Agricultural Research and Industrial Board with the powers proposed in the bill would create an independent agency whose activities would duplicate and conflict with those now being carried out in the Department.

If we took a bill to the floor with a statement like that, it would not have a chance. Here is a statement from the Department saying that the bill would be nothing but an act of duplication.

I will not read further from that. The Secretary may be right. I am not so saying, because I do not think he is.

On the next page there is the following:

Under the Department's existing authority the financing of an expanded program for increased use of agricultural products could be accomplished through the regular appropriation processes.

That sort of stymies us, as I see it, and we are further stymied this morning. I had a call just now from a member of my staff to come to the telephone, that I had a long-distance call from the State director of extension in my State. I thought, maybe, it was about cotton or rice or something like that.

Mr. HILL. Or feed grains.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Or about who was going to make the next move on the pending farm bill which is of momentous importance. But I told my secretary to tell my friend that I could not take the call now because I was attending a very important meeting of the committee, but that I would call him back.

My secretary talked with the party and has sent me this memorandum:

Dr. Clay Lyle just called from a meeting of southern experiment station directors in Atlanta, and urged that this message be placed in your hands during the meeting of the Agriculture Committee this morning re legislation for increasing industrial research on agricultural products for industrial uses:

"This group representing 13 States and Puerto Rico does not favor the Senatepassed bill (S. 4100) because it sets up a separate agency or separate administration and that is what the Secretary has complained about. The directors are greatly in favor of increased research but they think it should be administered within the framework of the Department rather than setting up a separate entity, administration, or commission."

The CHAIRMAN. That was probably written here in the Department. Mr. ABERNETHY. I am not saying that, Mr. Chairman. I do not know, but I do know this, and I do not blame them for their enthu

siasm: I do know that the Department is dominated by production research and I think the Senator will agree. I feel just as the Senator does, that one of the troubles now is that we did not shift several years ago to utilization research. I still feel that way about it. Production research has always dominated the Department's research activity and that is no criticism of the Secretary or of these people. I think the only way that will ever get the proper sort of utilization research is to do just exactly what you desire to do, and what the President's Commission on Research-reported and recommended that we do, that is, establish a separate agency, separate and apart from the Department, which could go its way and tend to its business without interference of the Department. I agree with the Senator. I am for the legislation but I do not think it has a chance in view of the situation we are facing this morning.

Mr. HARVEY. I wish to take this opportunity to say in behalf of our senior Senator from Indiana that he has worked tirelessly for a better solution of the problems of agriculture and has spent not only much of his effort, but a great deal of money as well, in attempting to acquaint the people with the need for better industrial utilization of our surplus commodities, and in that respect he has been very successful.

I certainly would like to congratulate him on his spectacular success in the Senate, along with several of his colleagues. I also note that my other colleague, Mr. Bray from Indiana, is here this morning and I assume in behalf of this legislation.

I also wish to speak my own support of a program of industrial research for I think it is the kind of program we can justify and one that will bring greater prosperity to agriculture.

Mr. DIXON. I likewise congratulate the Senator. I feel with all my heart that this program is one of the permanent cures for agriculture and instead of marketing 7 percent of our commodities through industry, we can market many, many times that amount.

What the Senator said is true, the individual farmer does not have the facilities to do research.

Oil research has created the great demand for detergents. It has created a demand for oil for plastics. We can make better plastics out of animal fats than they can out of oil products, but animal fats have not been promoted. Those are just examples of what can be done. This legislation is a must. It has to be passed. I do not want anything to stand in the road of its being passed.

With regard to the agency that is to administer it, I take issue with the Senator, and with my subcommittee chairman, that the Department of Agriculture is the better agency to administer it.

Senator CAPEHART. Will you yield? The legislation passed by the Senate leaves it entirely within the supervision of the Secretary of Agriculture. It simply sets up another department for him to supervise.

Mr. DIXON. Will the Senator permit me to read his bill?

There is created and established in the Department of Agriculture an agency of the United States to be known as the Agricultural Research and Industrial Administration, all of the powers of which shall be exercised by the Administrator.

I will go on a little further. That does not give the whole story. Under the general direction and supervision of the Secretary of Agriculture. Well, the administrator would be a research czar. He has all the power and you would not say that it would be administered by the Department of Agriculture when it says "all the powers of which shall be exercised by the Administrator."

Senator CAPEHART. Under the general supervision of the Secretary of Agriculture.

Mr. DIXON. The Secretary has no power, besides the President appoints the Administrator.

Senator CAPEHART. Here is the situation we find ourselves in. Everybody agrees that this ought to be done and it is a good thing, even the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. DIXON. That is right.

Senator CAPEHART. And we ought to do it, but we find ourselves now in an argument as to who is going to do it and the best way of doing it. Personally, I do not care as long as it is done. The thing that has been discouraging to me all the way through is that the Department of Agriculture will write letters, such as have been read here in part, but they never come up with a positive idea as to how to do it. They will not work with you in writing a bill, but they will simply say "Give us some more money and we will do the job ourselves."

Mr. DIXON. The difficulty that enters in is how to get the job done. Senator CAPEHART. Yes, and I do not care as long as they get the job done.

Mr. DIXON. I am for you 100 percent. In the first place, the only people who can do the job that I know of are in the Department; is that not right?

Senator CAPEHART. That is correct.

Mr. DIXON. The only scientists.

Senator CAPEHART. At the moment that is true.

Mr. DIXON. This bill gives authority to employ 10 supergrade people. They will be pulled right out of the organization we have already because we have 200 wonderful research experiments that are out of the test tubes that the Department has ready. That will deplete our staff of the best people.

In the second place, is not unity of command vital to any organization that makes headway? That is the first principle of any administration-unity of command. Here you have a dual-headed situation that has no unity of command. I have never seen a double-headed organization that got anywhere in a hurry.

Now, let us take a third proposition.

The CHAIRMAN. We have only 15 minutes. I did not realize that the House would convene at 11 o'clock this morning, and we have to hear several other authors of bills.

Mr. DIXON. One of the best prospects we have is to make paper, wrappings, and films and adhesives from corn. The corn we have only has 25 percent amylose. The experiment stations now have a species of corn that can be developed with 75 percent. That would provide a wonderful market for corn. How is this independent agency going to produce the kind of corn needed for these synthetics and paper and plastics without the help of a production agency?

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You can not have one or the other; you have to have one and the other; is that not true?

Senator CAPEHART. You need both. I am going to let others work out the best way to do it, but what we need to do is to spend as much money as possible on finding new uses and markets for farm products, as much money as we can spend to show the farmer how to grow more and more and more. That is my philosophy. That is what I have been trying to do over the last few years-get people interested in that and get the Department of Agriculture interested in it and to make it a sort of crash program. I mean by that, get the job done perhaps in 5 years what we would normally do in 25 years because of the fact that we are spending $6 billion this year on farm programs. We cannot continue forever spending $6 billion or more on farm programs, in my opinion.

Mr. DIXON. Is the gentleman aware that the Department has set up a special division with Dr. George Irving to do this very thing, and he is getting the ball rolling beautifully?

Senator CAPEHART. I am aware of all of that, except that I think we ought to go faster. We ought to have more money. We ought to have a department that concentrates on this one thing and this one thing alone and without anything else to think of except this.

Mr. DIXON. I appreciate very much the Senator's visit and I am with him a hundred percent on his purpose.

Senator CAPEHART. I would like to place into the record a copy of a statement that I prepared and also the expenditures for the last 29 years in agriculture and possible uses for farm products.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, they will be inserted in the record at this point.

(The documents referred to follow :)

TESTIMONY OF SENATOR HOMER E. CAPEHART OF THE STATE OF INDIANA

Mr. Chairman, to you, Mr. Chairman, and to all of the members of the committee I want to express my deep appreciation for the opportunity to appear here today in support of legislation which is and has for a long time been very close to my heart.

That proposed legislation would provide for a research and development program under the sponsorship of the Federal Government to discover and perfect new industrial uses for the everyday products of the American farm.

Mr. Chairman, with the assistance of many top experts in the field, I first proposed such a program in the 84th Congress when I, together with more than 30 cosponsors, introduced a bill on March 21, 1956. Senate bill 724, which I introduced in this Congress, is a duplicate of the original bill and likewise supported by more than 30 Senators who joined as cosponsors.

The Senate committee had before it also Senate bill 3697 introduced by Senator Olin D. Johnston, and Senate bill 2306 introduced by Senator Carl T. Curtis, implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Increased Industrial Uses of Agricultural Products. From those bills, the Senate committee wrote S. 4100, which was passed by the Senate 81 to 0 on July 28 and which is now before your committee.

The principle involved in all of these bills is exactly the same, and that principle has my wholehearted support despite some variance as to administrative details.

When I proposed the first bill in the 84th Congress, I told the Senate that I considered this bill "the most important program I ever have sponsored" in my tenure in the Senate.

I am now more convinced than ever that this is true. It is a program which is all pluses and no minuses. It is good for everybody,

It is a matter of very great satisfaction to me that my belief in the program and in the benefits which all of our people would derive from it was confirmed

by the findings of the Commission on Increased Industrial Use of Agricultural Products created with the approval of the Congress.

The able men who gave of their time, effort, and resources to compile their findings in Senate Document 45 of the first session of this Congress have my heartiest congratulations. They performed a read public service. It is vitally important to all Americans to get the job done and get it done now, because what here is proposed is of vital importance to every man, woman, and child in the United States.

It would produce hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It would substitute a positive approach for a negative effort to solve our farm problem.

It would solve our farm problem for all time to come because it would assure that a farmer would have a demand for everything he could grow on his acreage and thus receive a fair price for his products.

It would end once and for all our costly farm-surplus problem.

Now, let's see what this alone would mean-the end of surplus accumulation. For purposes of discussing this point, let us assume that it would cost $100 million to get the program underway.

Gentlemen, $100 million is less than one-third of the amount the Government has been spending just to store the vast surpluses for the last few years.

But, important as that financial saving would be, such a saving would be as a drop in the bucket when contrasted with the overall benefits accruing from such a program.

For, I am convinced that a properly directed research and development program would, within a few years, create a demand for farm products in industry at least equal in amount to that now consumed for human consumption and other purposes in the United States.

In other words, I believe it is safe to assume that such a program would double the farm market.

No longer would it be necessary to expand billions of dollars a year of taxpayers' money to acquire surpluses to sustain the farm economy.

No longer would it be necessary to pay our farmers not to produce their maximum. The demand would be there for everything a farmer could grow. It is obvious that such a situation would insure the farmer a good price for his maximum production. That is what I mean by the positive as opposed to the negative approach to the farm problem.

For the farmer, this would mean a whole new era of prosperity.

But, this again is only a part of the benefit accruing from such a program. Research would develop new products. New products would create demands for new production facilities. New production facilities would create new jobs. New jobs would create new wealth, a more stable economy and a better life for our people.

New production facilities, new factories, would create demands for more of everything-transportation, machinery, wholesale and retail outlets to meet the new demands for everything business has to sell.

There is no question that the job can be done. We know enough now about the results of research in this field that the possibilities—at least to those who have studied them intensely-are almost limitless.

Simply to develop to their ultimate possibilities the new uses we already know about would produce new activity almost staggering the imagination. And, it has been fairly well established that the surface of such possibilities has barely been scratched.

What we must do is take the blinders off, as it were, of our agricultural research program. We must throw the full white light of technical research and development, experimentation, test facilities, pilot-plant operations and American technical know-how into an all-out effort to discover and perfect new industrial uses for just the everyday products of our land.

Now, I don't want to be misunderstood about existing research. The Department has been doing some. Our fine agricultural and technical schools are working at it constantly. We have some very limited utilization research plants under Government management. Within their limited facilities, all of these agencies have been doing a good job.

But, what I am talking about here is a much more comprehensive effort, a job with top priority under the direction of an agency with ample funds and the authority to knock heads together, if necessary, to get the job done.

A good example of the type of operation I am talking about is the research program which brought us synthetic rubber during the war. The Government