Mr. ABBITT. Congressman Matthews?

Mr. MATTHEWS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the testimony he is giving. I will say that I know that the members of this subcommittee are just as much in sympathy with the idea of the bill as we are, but I do want to sell, again, if I may, the good points of my particular bill. I was hoping that it would help the little farmer in my district, with less than 1/2 acres. If he is tied down to cultivating that, he cannot become a large enough unit to make money out of that, and I am just hoping that if we could get this bill passed and if he could go to somebody with 112 acres or 1 acre and put his on the next plot of ground and could have his 3 or 4 acres together, then he would have enough actually to make profitable production.

So, I am pleading with the hope that I can get you for me on this bill, because I do sincerely believe it will help the little farmer-it may not do as much as we would want to do.

But as the bill says, the county committee could make some kind of arrangements to take care of individual production, so that if it is an irrigated acre as compared to one that has not been irrigated, they could downgrade it, you might say, a little bit.

This is going to cause some technical details. It is going to cause some bookkeeping, but what I am earnestly hoping we can do is to get something tangible that I believe will really save our little farmer. And so I really do hope that you stick with us on this bill, and I do believe that if it is passed it will really help the little farmer.

Mr. THOMAS. Well, if I were to go out and pay the man that has got 1 acre, for example, if I would pay him $100 just for his tobacco, what I am actually doing, in my book, is only increasing mine-I mean, what I am really doing is giving him a wager on his tobacco and I am really helping T. O. Thomas. In other words, I am still helping T. O. Thomas because that looks to me about what it amounts to. other words, if you take the man who has got-and there are some in our county, I understand-who have got a lot of means, they can go out and buy and rent several hundred acres, if they can get enough people to work it, because they have got the capital; but I cannot do that.

In

I would rather see a man, personally, get three acres all across the board-give every man 2 or 3 or 4 acres. I do not want to see the tobacco production increased, but I do want to see the acreage increased for the really little farmer.

Mr. ABBITT. If you give every farm, as you say, as much as 3

acres

Mr. THOMAS. I believe that the farmer is entitled to make a living; he has a wife, and he has an afflicted daughter, say, and yet the county committee only gives him one-fifth of an acre

Mr. ABBITT. And are you undertaking to say who would buy all of this tobacco from the 2 or 3 acres?

Mr. THOMAS. Well, no. But I do say he is entitled to have an allotment that will help support him and his family.

Mr. ABBITT. I ask if you want to vote out the whole program-but a lot of them would rather have the program, and we cannot afford to support a bill whereby the Government is going to underwrite the buying of all tobacco so that every farmer can get 3 acres; that cannot be done.

You must realize that the farm population now has been reduced to something like 12 percent of the whole population and it has become

a minority, decidedly so, and if we are going to have controls, we cannot expect the Government to come in and take all of the surplus year after year and increase it.

Mr. THOMAS. That if a man already has 15 acres you are going to have limits on it; in other words, if he has 8 or 10 or 15 or 150 acres, he can still rent it.

Mr. ABBITT. Then you are advocating that the man that has the tobacco allotment would keep it and the other man would get 3 acres― this little man?

Mr. THOMAS. I think that each man ought to keep his tobacco allotment and grow it. I think if he has an allotment, he ought to grow it, and he should have enough to make a livelihood for his family.

Mr. MCMILLAN. I think that about the only way that we can do that would be to increase the population so as to get more people smoking cigarettes; also have our own Government official overseer use more efforts in promoting the sale of U.S. tobacco.

Mr. ABBITT. Any questions, Congressman Matthews?

Mr. MATTHEWS. I have one observation. As you know, we can rent another man's tobacco allotment now. What my bill is trying to do is to make it easy for the little man to rent it so that instead of going over to a farm that is 5 or 10 miles or more away, my bill proposes that you can put it right with your acreage of tobacco on your own land, and I just want to be sure we had that in mind.

Mr. Chairman, before we call the next witness, I wish I could acknowledge and introduce for the record all of the distinguished people who are here. I know that our State legislators, many senators and representatives have expressed an interest in this, and I know that one of them is here, the Honorable Mr. McAlpin, of Hamilton County. I am, indeed, very glad to see him here. Joe, do you see any of your other colleagues? I know that they are all interested.

I just wanted to be sure to introduce our Senators and Representatives, Mr. Chairman. We have so far heard from about five or six of our counties. Fourteen of the fifteen counties in my Eighth District grow Flue-cured tobacco.

Mr. Chairman, I have a telegram from the Honorable Eugene Mugge, and I would like to read it. It is addressed to the chairman of the Florida Farm Bureau Tobacco Committee:

Sorry unable to attend meeting. We would like for you to support Matthews bill, H.R. 8819. Stress need to leave judgment of productivity of farm in hands of county ASC committees. Please forward to Congressman Matthews. Eugene Mugge, Lamar Andrews, T. S. Studstill, Joe S. Reams favor the proposed tobacco law as prepared. Impossible to attend meeting.

EUGENE MUGGE.

I would like, Mr. Chairman, for permission to include that in the record.

Mr. ABBITT. Yes.

(Telegram referred to follows:)

LACY DOKE,

GREENVILLE, FLA., October 23, 1959.

Chairman, Florida Farm Bureau Tobacco Committee,
Suwannee County Farm Bureau, Live Oak, Fla.:

Sorry unable to attend meeting. We would like for you to support Matthews bill, H.R. 8819. Stress need to leave judgment of productivity of farm in hands of county ASC committees. Please forward to Congressman Matthews. Eugene Mugge, Lamar Andrews, T. S. Studstill, Joe S. Reams favor the proposed tobacco law as prepared. Impossible to attend,

EUGENE MUGGE.

Mr. MATTHEWS. And before we have the next witness, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank our good friend Randy Mai for bringing Congressman Jennings over here. I saw Randy in the audience, and I want to tell him that we appreciate that very much.

Mr. ABBITT. Thank you, Mr. Matthews.

Who is the next person who wants to speak?

STATEMENT OF T. D. MOCK, SUWANNEE COUNTY

Mr. ABBITT. Give your name for the record and where you are from, please.

Mr. Mock. T. D. Mock, Suwannee County.

Mr. ABBITT. How much tobacco allotment do you have?

Mr. Mock. I have seven-tenths of an acre.

Mr. ABBITT. We are glad to hear from you, Mr. Mock.

Mr. Mock. The gentleman over here is asking questions about, I think, pertaining to what I have to say, and that is the reason I got up to say it here, and that is whether or not I rented what I had on my place, 5.2 acres of tobacco, I rented and I planted-well, there were four different patches and the way it all wound up, I spent my time running from one field to the other, and hauling and what with everything all put together it cost me $400 an acre to put it on the platform, the warehouse floor.

And my point is, that if it had all been on my place in one batch, then it would only run me about $300 an acre, and I think that is an advantage to having it where you can keep it all together and plant it in one place.

Mr. MCMILLAN. And I expect that if you added your own labor at the regular wage rate, it would have cost you more than $400? Mr. Mock. You mean counting my own labor?

Mr. MCMILLAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. Mock. I never count my own labor.

Mr. MCMILLAN. That is the way I thought it was. The reason I asked was to have the record show that if you counted your family's labor at the average cost of labor then your cost for raising the tobacco per acre was nearer $800 than $400.

Mr. Mock. Well, I got by a little cheaper than that, it cost me $500, but I figured that if it was all in one batch, I could get by with $300. Mr. ABBITT. Well, you would have grown more poundage than you have now, is that it?

Mr. Mock. No, I just would have better quality tobacco.

Mr. ABBITT. Your tobacco could get better attention?

Mr. Mock. That is right.

Mr. ABBITT. Are there any other questions?

(No response.)

Mr. ABBITT. Well, we certainly do want to thank you very much for your information. Is there anyone else who wants to be heard?

Mr. Mock. Thank you, that about covers what I was trying to say. Mr. ABBITT. Somebody over here wanted to be heard. Will you come forward, please?

STATEMENT OF ALBERT REAMS, MADISON COUNTY

Mr. ABBITT. Give us your name and where you live, for the record, please.

Mr. REAMS. Albert Reams, from Madison County.

Mr. ABBITT. What is your tobacco acreage?

Mr. REAMS. I have a little over 20 acres.

Now, gentlemen, I think that there is one point that is being overlooked, in my opinion, with all of this talk and discussion and conversation here about the 1- and 2- and 3-acre men, and that is this, I feel in my opinion that one question there is that they should be asked of those men, that is, how long have they been growing tobacco?

Now, my acreage comes off of 12 farms and the smallest acreage of any farm is three-tenths of an acre-you understand, I am for this bill 100 percent-and my largest acreage on any one farm at present, since the cut, would be 4 acres. Originally it was seven.

Now, when you come to classes, you have the class of a man who has got 20 or 40 or 60 or 100 acres, but if you break that down, you will find that he is still in the 1- and 2- and 3-acre class.

Now, as I understand it, your allotment is based on history and your biggest acreage comes from your biggest history or your longest history, and my point is that if there is an increase for the 2-acre man, then there should be an increase for the 20- or 30-acre man and in my case, if they were to get this increase, talking about your smaller farmer-well, I am nothing but a smaller farmer myself—I mean, where I have all of my farms on the one worksheet, I would break every worksheet and get myself back to the 1.3-acre class, to bring myself up to the 2- or 3-acre level, if that would be the case, but I think that the history of most of your larger farmers shows that it comes from the smaller farms, that they have accumulated over a period of time or that they have already leased or rented—I don't know that I am making myself clear.

The reason that I made this remark was that so many times you have got new growers. You know, we have had rigid controls on allotments for a number of years, and it has been hard for the new grower to break into this tobacco-producing game. When a farmer has been growing for 5 or 6 years, then I think he is entitled to 3 or 4 acresand I would love for him to have it, you understand, but he does not have the history to warrant him having that additional acreage.

Not only that, but whenever they cut our allotments, don't you go around thinking that the man with the few extra acres don't feel it when there is a cut. When they cut you 2 or 3 acres at a time, that is a pretty good lick.

That is all I got to say along that line unless you want to ask some questions.

Mr. ABBITT. What is your total land acreage, approximately?

Mr. REAMS. I couldn't answer that, because I have my own personal farm, and I have 1,700 acres in the farm, and when that farm was bought, it had a 7-acre allotment in tobacco and since all of the

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other cuts the allotment is down now to roughly a little over 4 acres, but I have consolidated some of my other smaller farms and I have maintained a decent acreage for the tenants.

Mr. ABBITT. How many tenants do you have to operate that acreage?

Mr. REAMS. I have three or four there at present. That is all that I have to say, but I want to make one remark, though.

Mr. Jennings asked questions about selling a tobacco allotment. I am definitely not for selling any tobacco allotments, but I think there are cases in your counties where allotments should be disposed of in

some way.

I know, for example, in my own particular section in Madison County, of outsiders that have come in and bought up 300 or 400 acres and palnted it 100 percent in grass, and they have a 2- or 3-acre tobacco allotment, and they don't want the tobacco allotment and so they don't want to turn it back to the county, either, and they want a particular individual or a particular friend to have that tobacco and so I think that there should be means for that tobacco allotment to go wherever the two different parties would like for it to go with county committee approval.

Mr. ABBITT. Well, would it not add to your surplus of just that much?

Mr. ABBITT. I thought you said he was going to put it all in grass. Mr. REAMS. Well, if it could be transferred to another farm, I

mean.

Mr. ABBITT. He would transfer that and thereby he would create that much more surplus?

Mr. REAMS. No, sir; it is already being produced. In other words, they rip up 3 or 4 acres of grass each year and plant that much allotment to keep it alive, keep from losing it.

Mr. ABBITT. Are you predicating it on the fact that each man that puts all of his farm in grass should be allowed to sell or transfer the tobacco allotment?

Mr. REAMS. Well, I think that in a case like that they should be allowed.

Mr. ABBITT. Well, if they do that, would it add to the surplus? Mr. REAMS. No, sir. The farmer is just trying to keep that allotment alive.

Well, I do have just one more remark that I might as well take the chance to make while I am here, and that is on this irrigation business. I have been irrigating, you know, for a number of years, on one farm I have been irrigating roughly for 8 years, and out of those 8 years, in 6 of those years I have not needed irrigation, and my neighbors who are on nonirrigation, have beaten me in quality and tonnage, 6 out of the 8 years. And in the last 3 years, my neighbors that don't have irrigation have beaten me in quality and in tonnage and I have not had to use it, I have not had any use for it that time and the only time that irrigation is useful is, possibly, for your unusually dry years, and so don't get the idea that that is where your surplus is