start out on this small basis for the first year, I think the presumption is that by getting the work started and the mechanism established as the years go on, under the authorizations that are in this act, the allocations would become more generalized, and it would be understood more and more clearly that if a worthy applicant did not get a loan this year, he might have a chance to get it the next year, and so on. Mr. CANNON. Then your ultimate objective would be 3,000 counties? Mr. PERKINS. Yes, sir; it would. Mr. CANNON. Or would you contemplate acquiring additional farms in the same 500 counties? Mr. PERKINS. No. If the amount authorized in the bill were made available the second year, certainly the program would be expended as widely as possible, within fiscal limitations, so as to take care of just as many tenant farmers in the United States as possible. Mr. JUMP. It was never anticipated that the allocations would apply to only the same counties year after year. Mr. PERKINS. Oh, no. Mr. CANNON. Mr. Perkins, you have not incurred any obligations so far under this law, have you? Mr. PERKINS. Oh, no. Mr. CANNON. There is no immediate emergency, and you seem to be rather vague in your plans. The matter could very well go over until the next session, could it not? It is not really a deficiency, is it? Mr. PERKINS. Well, that, of course, is a matter for the judgment of the Congress. But my feeling is that there is an emergency with regard to this problem of tenancy. We are up against it every day in terms of what is happening to farmers because of the mechanization of agriculture, for example. I do not believe that people, generally, realize that thousands of men who farmed 40 acres with a mule, are now being displaced by tractors; we hear from California and Arizona these frantic pleas: "Stop this flux of people into our States. We cant handle them." Mr. CANNON. And you think this will stop it? Mr. PERKINS. No; I do not. But I do want to point out that we have an acute problem in our tenant areas. Of course, if these farmers can be made owners to the extent contemplated in this bill, while it certainly will not solve the problem, it will help. It will establish a pattern. Now, as to definite plans, I think we do have reasonably definite plans, Mr. Cannon. The only thing about which we are uncertain has to do with the number of counties in which we can efficiently operate, because of the wording of the law itself. No amount of time prior to an appropriation will solve that. It is a matter of actual experience. NUMBER AND COST PER ACRE OF SUBMARGINAL LAND UNDER 3-YEAR PROGRAM Mr. CANNON. Mr. Gray, you have tentatively selected the States in which these purchases of submarginal land would be made, have you? Dr. GRAY. Yes, Mr. Cannon, we have tentatively outlined a program for 3 years by States, but Secretary Wallace, on his return will have to decide the selection of areas for the expenditure of funds during the current year. Mr. CANNON. Would the lands be localized in large bodies in a few States, or would they be distributed throughout the Union? Dr. GRAY. Thinking of this as a 3-year program, as we understood was the intent of Congress, we think that the purchase areas should be rather widely distributed throughout the Union. That was the scheme of the former program, which was not wholly like this one but resembled it somewhat. Mr. CANNON. You propose to spend $10,000,000 this year and $25,000,000 in the next 2 years? Dr. GRAY. $20,000,000 in the second year and $20,000,000 in the third year. Mr. CANNON. That would be $50,000,000? Dr. GRAY. A total of $50,000,000; yes, sir. Mr. CANNON. What acreage do you think you could acquire in the 3-year program? Dr. GRAY. Assuming that we did not spend quite all of it on the acquisition of land, but spent part of it on the development and improvement of the lands that we bought, which the act authorizes and directs the Secretary to do. We have estimated that in the first year, out of the $10,000,000, we would buy approximately 2,100,000 acres of land. We would accept options on that much, although we could not hope to get it all titled and paid for by the end of the first year. Mr. CANNON. In what States, principally, would that land be located the 2,100,000 acres? Dr. GRAY. I cannot speak, of course, for the Secretary. This act gives the Secretary the authority to develop this program, and the Secretary is out of town. In the preliminary discussions that have been had among subordinate officials of the Department, and with those who are acting in charge while the Secretary is away, there is a feeling that during the first year there should be considerable emphasis on the Great Plains territory. Mr. CANNON. The bulk of this, then, would be bought in the "dust bowl"? Dr. GRAY. Well, not the "dust bowl" in the narrow sense applying merely to the Southwest. If you use "dust bowl" in the broad sense of the whole Great Plains region, I think we would perhaps during the first year be inclined to place major emphasis on the Great Plains territory. Mr. CANNON. About what would that cost you per acre, on the average? Dr. GRAY. We have set a figure for budgetary purposes-just something to shoot at of $3.50 an acre. I am inclined to think it might run a little bit less than that if we confined our purchasing mainly to the Great Plains this year, because we averaged in the old program, for the land bought in the Great Plains, about $2.85, but assuming that we might buy some land outside of the Great Plains during the first year, we thought we had better be a little more liberal in the over-all estimate. Mr. WOODRUM. Does that include the price paid for the options? Dr. GRAY. Just the cost of the land, not including the administration and legal expenses of acquisition. Mr. CANNON. Of course, it is generally conceded that the purchase of submarginal land benefits the land generally; but how is this directly connected with solving the tenancy problem? Dr. GRAY. I do not know that it is, Mr. Cannon, except insofar as some of the people that find themselves stranded on submarginal land happen to be tenants. In the old program of projects about 40 percent of the farmers that were living on the land that we bought were tenants. Mr. CANNON. You take the tenants off the land; of course, you would not keep them on the land? Dr. GRAY. That is right, in most cases. Mr. CANNON. What would you do with this land? Dr. GRAY. First, it depends somewhat on where it is bought. Now, in the emergency land program, land bought in the Great Plains mainly is being taken out of arable farming and put back into grazing. We have put a little of it into recreational areas, and some into wildlife areas. Mr. CANNON. If you put it back into grazing land, you would expect to rent the grazing privileges to stockmen, would you? Dr. GRAY. Yes, sir; but with restrictions that would prevent overgrazing on the range. Much of the range, as you know, is being ruined by overgrazing. Mr. CANNON. But even at that, it would still be productive land? Dr. GRAY. It would still be productive land. In Mr. CANNON. It would not be removing it from utilization? Dr. GRAY. No; it would not be removing it from utilization. fact, we do not speak of removing any of this land from some kind of utilization. Mr. CANNON. I was under the impression that submarginal land was being bought in order to take it out of utilization. Dr. GRAY. We can take it out of arable farming. That, I believe, is true. The difficulty in the Great Plains, as you know, has grown out of the creation of small arable farms, through the homestead system, which are not adapted to the conditions of that area; breaking up the range and putting it into small arable farms. This practice has engendered all kinds of trouble. There are counties out there in which, within 3 or 4 years, the Federal Government has spent almost enough money to buy the entire county, in one kind of subsidy or another; and there is no permanent solution of that problem by simply leaving the type of economy as it has been. Mr. CANNON. How much of this land, if any, would be adaptable to forestry? If Dr. GRAY. That wholly depends on where the land is located. we bought largely in the Great Plains, in the first year, very little, if any, of it would be adaptable to forestry. Mr. CANNON. You would not expect to put a great deal of it back into the forests? Dr. GRAY. Not in the Great Plains. When we extend the program, if the Congress continues to support the program in the second and third year, then we would expect to buy some land, in order to remove it from farming uses, which perhaps would be suitable for forestry. That is the difference between the old program and the one that we are now projecting. The old program was based on emergency conditions, and the Cabinet committee which formulated the policy developed it on this very broad basis-that we would buy any kind of land that was being misused and put it to some better use. The result was that we did buy a great deal of cut-over land and swamp land, which was adaptable for forests or wildlife refuges, but was not agricultural land at the time it was bought. Now the intent of the Department, as I understand the preliminary discussions of policy, is to give much greater emphasis to agricultural readjustment, using this means of furthering the development of agriculture in various parts of the country, and to emphasize the human side of it much more. Mr. CANNON. That is the general agricultural program. That has no direct connection with the solution of the problem of tenancy? Dr. GRAY. Yes, sir; the act authorizes and directs the Secretary to develop a program of land conservation and land utilization-and that is a program including the retirement of lands which are submarginal or not primarily suitable for cultivation. Mr. CANNON. Yes; I know the provisions of the bill, but I was just trying to understand how that came to be associated with tenancy. Dr. GRAY. I do not know the legislative history of it. I presume it is this: You will recall that the President appointed a special tenancy committee and that committee did not confine its report merely to persons that were in the status of tenants, but it devoted its report to various classes of agricultural population who are in a submerged economic and social condition. Now, in that group were not only persons who were technically tenants, but persons stranded on submarginal land; and so the committee included recommendations with respect to the latter problem, recommendations with regard to the rehabilitation attack on the problem of submerged agricultural groups. I suppose that was the way in which the bill attained its omnibus form. Mr. CANNON. As a matter of fact, the purchase of a hundred million acres of submarginal land anywhere in the United States would not increase by a single man the number of tenants who are land owners? Dr. GRAY. No; not necessarily. NUMBER OF ACRES AND SOURCES OF FUNDS FOR SUBMARGINAL LAND PURCHASED Mr. CANNON. We are in the midst now of a great program, and have been for a number of years, of the retirement of submarginal land. How many acres of submarginal lands have been retired, Mr. Gray, under this program? Dr. GRAY. We have bought, altogether, about 9,100,000 acres. When I say "bought", I mean we have accepted options on that amount, and we have issued checks on about 66% percent of that. We have passed through our hands and completed the title work on about 80 percent of it, and we expect the rest of it to be about wound up by the first of the year, with the exception of the most difficult cases where we have had titles so bad that we have had to go to the courts to get them cleared up. Mr. CANNON. What was the source of the funds with which those purchases were made? Dr. GRAY. The funds came from various relief acts over the period from 1933 to 1936. The exact titles can be cited, but I do not have them all in mind. Mr. CANNON. They were principally relief funds? Dr. GRAY. They were all relief funds; that is, all were funds appropriated under so-called relief acts. Mr. CANNON. Of course, we would like to have this statement tabulated in the record, but in the meantime I will ask you this: This 9,000,000 acres includes all those purchased and all those contracted for? Dr. GRAY. Yes, sir; that is right. Mr. TABER. How much money? Dr. GRAY. As far as Resettlement is concerned and its relationship to the program, about $44,000,000. That includes the amount paid for land and the cost of acquiring it. Mr. LUDLOW. Have all these been voluntary sales, or have you ever condemned land? Dr. GRAY. We have condemned in a few cases. We have condemned in a number of cases where we had very involved titles, and the seller was willing voluntarily to enter into a court action to clear up the title and cure the defects. Then in a few cases, where we were, as a part of the plan, building a reservoir or a lake-and we have built perhaps a couple of thousand lakes or reservoirs on these lands, many of them in this arid country-some landowners would hold out on some tract within the bed of the lake or reservoir, or in the line of the dam, and try to hold the Government up, and we would proceed with involuntary condemnation. FORESTRY LANDS ACQUIRED Mr. CANNON. What forest lands have been bought during this period? Dr. GRAY. I cannot give you exact information on that, because I have not handled that program. You mean exclusively the forest program? Mr. CANNON. Yes. Dr. GRAY. I believe the Forest Service has bought about eleven or twelve million acres of land, primarily for purposes of forestry. Mr. CANNON. But that character of land is not comparable to submarginal land? Dr. GRAY. Not to submarginal land, if by that you mean land that is occupied by farmers who are trying to make a living on poor land. Mr. CANNON. This is land which would not support cultivation? Dr. GRAY. The type of land purchased by the Forest Service would not, and is not in cultivation, in the main. Now, in some of our projects we have cooperated with the Forest Service. They have, we will say, a national forest, and scattered through that forest are some farmers living on some submarginal land, trying to scratch out a living, and they are not doing themselves any good, and they are not doing the forest any good. We have bought some of these scattering units and will turn them over to the Forest Service. Mr. CANNON. Then, altogether, in the two groups, all of which are submarginal, you have bought an aggregate of in excess of 20,000,000 acres in the last 3 or 4 years? Dr. GRAY. That includes what the Forest Service has bought. |