Estimate of funds required, Title I, Farm Tenancy Act

1. Loans to farm tenants..

2. County committees under section 42a.

Approximately 500 committees consisting of 3 members each will meet an aver-
age of 9 times during the year; each meeting will average 3 days in length.
One State-wide meeting will be held in each State and will average 3 days in
length.

County meetings......

Salaries and expense allowance.

$4 per member per day; 27 days per member, equals $108; 1,500 members
at $108 equals $162,500.

Temporary stenographic hire..

To be hired at such times as committees may require services of this type.

$9,500,000 212,000

$174,000

162, 000

12,000

$4 per member per day; 3 days per member equals $12; 1,500 members
at $12 equals $18,000.

Travel

15,000

Average of 200 miles per member at 5 cents per mile equals $10 per member,
1,500 members at $10 equals $15,000.

Estimate of funds required, Title I, Farm Tenancy Act-Continued

Mr. WOODRUM. We have spoken thus far about title I of the act. Won't you give us, in just a paragraph or two, a statement about each of the titles of the act?

Mr. PERKINS. As to title I, I think perhaps, there having been so much discussion about it, it will not be necessary for me to go further on that.

Mr. WOODRUM. No; title II is rehabilitation loans.

Mr. PERKINS. Title II provides, in effect, for a continuance of the rehabilitation loan program.

Mr. WOODRUM. There is nothing asked for that now in this estimate? Mr. PERKINS. No money is asked for that, so, if it is agreeable to the committee, I will pass over it.

Mr. WOODRUM. Yes.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Under title II the money comes out of relief funds, does it not?

Mr. PERKINS. Yes, sir; out of relief funds.

Mr. WOODRUM. You might put in the record a break-down of the allotments you have received under title II.

Mr. PERKINS. Yes, sir; I can do that. I am wondering, though, if the hearings under which we got this money are not as good an answer as a break-down would be. You see, there is nothing definitely authorized for that. We indicated in the hearings, however, about what we thought it would cost to carry out this program.

Mr. WOODRUM. Just put a brief statement in the record. How much have you gotten?

Mr. PERKINS. So far this year, $18,000,000 has been given to us, for this purpose and I think we spent about 11⁄2 million dollars during July.

PURCHASE OF SUBMARGINAL LAND

Mr. WOODRUM. Title III, retirement of submarginal land. Just give us a brief description of what that means, and then we are going to have a little break-down of these items.

Mr. PERKI S. Very well, sir. Dr. Gray knows very much more about land utilization, proper land use, and land acquisition than I will ever know. But, very simply, title III provides that the Secretary of Agriculture may acquire submarginal land in connection with the development of a program of wise land use, and, as Secretary Wilson pointed out this morning, the Secretary of Agriculture has set up in his office a very small unit of coordination on the problems of land use planning, land policy, and land survey activities. The money made available under title III will be used, if it is appropriated, to develop an economic program of land use, as expressly provided in the act, as well as to buy submarginal land itself.

Mr. WOODRUM. There is $10,000,000 in the estimate for that program of land acquisition and utilization?

Mr. PERKINS. Yes, sir.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Are we doing that same work with other agencies in the Department?

Mr. PERKINS. No, sir.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What is the distinction between this submarginal land acquisition and development and other land?

Mr. PERKINS. There has been, of course, a program of submarginal land acquisition carried on within the Resettlement Administration. It is intended that the program of land acquisition here proposed shall primarily concern itself with wise agricultural land use, and it would be, with some modifications, a continuation of the old program which is being completed under Resettlement. The money would be made available to the Department of Agriculture and would be spent for developing a program of sound land use. There are many ways in which the money could actually be used to serve that end.

Mr. TABER. What are you going to do with it? Have you got options on lands now that you propose to take up with this money, or do you expect to go out and get other lands, or what? And where do you propose to spend it?

Mr. PERKINS. I will make, if I may, a very brief statement on that, and then I think we will call upon Dr. Gray who is in a much better position to answer these detailed questions than am I.

In general, I would say that it is not proposed to use any considerable part of the money on options which at the moment happen to have been offered to the Government unless they are for lands which properly should be acquired in furtherance of a land-utilization

program.

Certainly there is a terrific need for the application of the provisions of this act to the Great Plains area. That is perhaps the one place in the country in which at the moment we could do more good with this money than we could in any other geographical part of the United States.

Mr. TABER. Do you propose to buy land?

Mr. PERKINS. That is a primary purpose of this title. There are many counties out there where the purchase of submarginal land solves the key problem for that area. I would not be free to commit

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the Department as to policy, as to exactly how it would spend the land-purchase fund; but I know of several situations in which it would be extremely desirable to make purchases, and the Secretary's office would consider these when the time came.

Mr. TABER. Don't you think you ought to have that worked out before we appropriate the money? In other words, don't you think you ought to have a program?

is?

Mr. PERKINS. I am not indicating that we do not have a program. Mr. TABER. Don't you think you ought to tell us what the program

Mr. PERKINS. Yes, sir; Dr. Gray will go into that in somewhat more detail. But we know at the moment of pending applications for the use of this money which would far exceed the appropriation proposed. There are many places in the country where the key to the solution of agricultural problems depends on the public acquisition of submarginal land with a view to devoting it to such uses as will serve the general welfare.

ADVISABILITY OF CONFINING EXPERIMENTS TO ONE COUNTY IN EACH STATE

Mr. CANNON. How effective would be a plan under which you would limit your experiments to one county in a State? This, you concede, is experimental. Don't you think you would learn as much by limiting your operations to one county in the State as you would by conducting them in 500 counties?

Mr. PERKINS. To be perfectly frank about it, I think we would have great difficulty in getting outstanding farmers in any one county to do the work that would be necessary to select one farm. I do not think the farmers would be interested in serving as committee men.

Mr. CANNON. I am not speaking of one farm; I am speaking of one county in a State.

Mr. PERKINS. Very frankly, I think that might be a better way to do it.

Mr. CANNON. Now, if that were done, what amount of money would be required to finance it?

Mr. PERKINS. If we narrowed it down to one county in each State, we would still have many more tenants asking for these loans than we would have money available for loans to buy farms. It is up to the Congress to determine how much money it wants to make available. But even if we operated in one county in each State on a $10,000,000 appropriation, the county committee would still have this same sifting problem, though, frankly, I think they would do a much better job than could be done in 500 counties with the same amount of money.

Mr. CANNON. You say now that your plans are, tentatively, to handle about 500 counties?

Mr. PERKINS. And, might I add, that is wholly tentative. The Secretary of Agriculture has not yet decided, for himself, just what he will do about this.

Mr. CANNON. But that is the best thing you have before you at this time; that is the most concrete thing that is suggested that you have 500 counties. This would reduce it to 48 or 50 counties, depending on the territories, and necessarily, with only 48 or 50 counties,

you could handle this work for about one-tenth of the amount that would be required for 500 counties, could you not?

Mr. PERKINS. Might I say this: Our administrative expenses would go down, if we narrowed this program to 48 counties in the country, and instead of making loans for 5 or 6 farms, we made loans for 50 or 60 in each county

Mr. CANNON (interposing). Oh, no; I mean five or six farms in one county in each State, choosing the county always, of course, that the Census Bureau showed had the greatest percentage of tenancy.

Mr. PERKINS. Of course, that is a matter for the discretion of the Congress. My feeling, however, is that with thousands of letters pouring in from all over the country, the demands for this opportunity are apt to be so great that we are going to have tough administrative problems in trying to keep everybody staisfied even if $10,000,000 is appropriated.

Mr. CANNON. Of course, if you are going to act in response to the demand, that would mean every county. But if you reduce it to 50 counties, that would reduce it to about one-tenth. Could you not reduce your estimate to $1,000,000 instead of $10,000,000, if you limit it to five or six farms? What would be the difference between 50 counties with $1,000,000 and 500 counties with $10,000,000?

Mr. PERKINS. The difference, if I may say so, would be an overall difference; namely, that with the terrific problem of trying to satisfy 3 million tenants, if Congress made an appropriation of only $1,000,000, it would be 10 times as bad as one of $10,000,000, which is still a wholly inadequate amount, considering the magnitude of the problem. Mr. CANNON. That is beside the point. The number of tenants and number of applicants does not seem to enter into the program with you at all. If you acted in response to demand, of course you would have about 3,000 counties. If you are going to have an economical program, why not arbitrarily select 50 counties out of 500 counties?

Mr. PERKINS. If we wanted to do a clean-cut administrative job it is my personal opinion that the money could be more wisely spent in one county at a time, and on 50 or 60 farms, than by lending money to buy 5 or 6 farms in each of 500 counties. I think it would have much more influence on the life of each county community. But I believe the intent of this bill is to make the influence of the program felt as widely as possible.

Mr. CANNON. You have just denied that. You said you were not going to make it as widely distributed as possible. Then, if you want 50 or 60 in a county, why not divide the State into reasonable groups, as we have, for example, in the ecological groups, dividing them into groups which have similar crop problems and are similar in industrial environment, and have 50 or 60 farms, say, in 10 counties or 5 counties. Would that give you the desired result?

Mr. PERKINS. I do not know how to answer that, Mr. Cannon, except to say that it would be about one-tenth as effective as a $10,000,000 program. Of course we are going to attempt to do as much as we can with the money which may be made available, and to do as good an administrative job as is possible.

Mr. JUMP. Mr. Cannon, I believe there is confusion on one point. that I might clear up. This is an estimate for the first year only, but there is an authorization of $25,000,000 for the second year, and if they