1931, 1,553,000; for 1932, 1,413,000; and for 1933, 1,554,000. was an increase over 1932.

There

Mr. CANNON. The crop in 1932, you think, was too large, both in Missouri and the United States?

Dr. WARBURTON. Yes, sir; in the United States.

Mr. CANNON. Then, if you fail to reduce the acreage below the acreage of 1932, you have failed in your objective.

Dr. WARBURTON. For the State of Missouri, those figures indicate that no reduction was accomplished, but for Kansas, which grows about 10 times as much wheat as Missouri, the figure for 1931 was 13,887,000 acres.

Mr. CANNON. What was it in 1932?

Dr. WARBURTON. In 1932, the Kansas acreage was 12,853,000. That reduction was due to two causes, one the low price, but more particularly to the very unfavorable weather conditions in the fall of 1932, which prevented the sowing of the normal acreage. Mr. CANNON. That was too large a production?

Dr. WARBURTON. Yes, sir. The Kansas figure for 1933 is 11,953,000 acres, which is barely 1,000,000 acres below the comparatively small 1932 acreage, but it is practically 2,000,000 acres below the 1930 acreage. Therefore, apparently, something was accomplished where it would do the most good.

Mr. CANNON. To what do you attribute the failure of this campaign for reduction in Missouri?

Dr. WARBURTON. I think it was due to two causes. As I have stated, a considerable number of farmers, because of the low price, had gone entirely out of wheat production.

Mr. CANNON. What percentage of Missouri farmers signed the contract?

Dr. WARBURTON. I do not have those figures in mind, but I will be glad to get them for you.

Mr. CANNON. As I recall it, the Secretary told us yesterday it was about 66% percent.

Mr. JUMP. When we have the Agricultural Adjustment Administration up here, they will tell you about that.

[NOTE. The wheat section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration advises that approximately 50 percent of the wheat acreage in Missouri was signed up in the wheat production control campaign.]

Dr. WARBURTON. I know that in some counties the number was comparatively small.

Mr. CANNON. The success of that campaign depended upon the efficiency of the emergency agricultural agents?

SELECTION OF AGENTS

Dr. WARBURTON. To a considerable extent, yes, sir.

Mr. CANNON. What method did you follow in selecting those men? Dr. WARBURTON. Most of the staff have been on the job for some years. The usual requirement is graduation from a college of agriculture, several years of farming experience, and, of course, they are selected, also, with reference to their ability and their personal characteristics.

Mr. CANNON. Did you select local men, or did you bring men in from the outside?

Dr. WARBURTON. As to the men on the State staff, I might say that the selections are not made by us, but by the State Extension Service directors, in agreement with the county authorities in which the agent is employed. The agents in most cases are graduates of the State universities.

Mr. CANNON. My question was, Do you select local men, or go outside and bring in men from other sections of the country?

Dr. WARBURTON. Our usual plan is to select as county agent one who does not reside in the county. The usual plan is not to appoint a man in his home county.

Mr. CANNON. I am not speaking of the county agents, but of the emergency agricultural agents.

Dr. WARBURTON. The emergency agents were appointed from Civil Service registers, because the entire amount of salary was paid from Agricultural Adjustment Administration funds.

Mr. CANNON. Evidently that was the weakness in the plan.

Dr. WARBURTON. It was necessary to have some trained men in each county if the program was to be properly presented to the farmers.

Mr. CANNON. Who do you think could better sell this to the farmers, a man the farmers knew, in whom they had confidence as representing the farmers and the farm organizations, or some carpetbagger brought in from the outside, with whom the farmers were out of sympathy, and whom they did not know anything about? I do not believe that having a Ph.D. would help a man to sell that program to the local farmers. He could not do it as well as some man in whom they had confidence, and who represented them in their model farm organizations. In Missouri, for example, we have a farm organization-the Missouri Farmers' Association. It owns a large number of local exchanges and has its own central plants and elevators. It has the largest annual turnover of any cooperative farm organization except the cooperative of citrus growers on the Pacific Coast and is the largest car-load shipper of eggs in America. And although it is farmer-organized and farmer-owned and farmeroperated, the United States Department of Agriculture has for years waged a relentless fight to exterminate it. You cannot imagine the Department of Labor seeking to destroy a union labor organization, but the Farm Board was outspoken in its efforts to injure this farm organization and in all its prodigal career of spendthrift scattering of millions of dollars refused at any time to lend a dollar to the Missouri Farmers Association although it could not deny that its collateral was worth many times the loans applied for. The opposition of the Department to this outstanding farm cooperative has been consistent and implacable. The latest evidence of its unethical persecution of these embattled farmers was in the appointment of the men who handled the wheat reduction campaign this year, the agricultural agents or representatives.

Dr. WARBURTON. Emergency agricultural agents.

Mr. CANNON. Emergency agricultural agents or representatives. There are counties in the State in which practically every farmer in the county is a member of the Missouri Farmers Association. Not another farm organization was represented in Franklin County for example. It was only natural that they should ask and expect that a member of their own cooperative organization should handle this wheat campaign. I took up their request with the Department and I was assured that they would be accorded that privilege. But when the appointments were made that promise was flatly repudiated and this organization composed of men who have built up successful business organizations in towns all over the State was not permitted to have a single man in the wheat reduction campaign. Men were brought in who were frankly hostile to the Missouri Farmers Association in violation of the explicit promise of the Department. And not content with that they announced to the farmers that unless they were retained after the close of the wheat campaign the farmers would have difficulty in getting their hog and corn allotment. In other words the Department of Agriculture said to these farmers unless you accept our dictation you will be denied the Government aid that is given every other cooperating farmer in the Nation. It is but natural that this systematic persecution of an organization of dirt farmers by the Department that should have been their best friend occasioned resentment and in a large measure accounts for the failure to secure cooperation in our State. I talked to Mr. Smith. I said to him, "You are using this emergency as an opportunity to put your representatives in every county in the United States." He said, "Yes." As you know, in every disaster, we have always had those who took advantage of the occasion to forward their own purposes. This has evidently been done in the selection of these emergency agents in my State.

Dr. WARBURTON. I made a rather close study of the sign-ups in the wheat campaign for certain counties in which the Missouri Farmers' Association was strong and in other counties with a similar population and a similar number of farmers growing wheat, and in which the association, apparently, based on the reports I had, did not have much membership, and, frankly, I could not see any difference in the percentage of farmers who signed.

Mr. CANNON. If you had talked to the farmers who did not sign, you would have a better idea of it.

Dr. WARBURTON. Of course, what we did was to take the census figures showing the number of farmers, or wheat farmers, in the various counties, and the number of farmers who signed the contract.

Mr. CANNON. And you found the number who signed the contract fell far below the number of those who did not sign. I have talked to them personally, and they have written to me protesting vigorously about it. They protested to me, saying that they refused to sign because these "carpetbaggers", as they expressed it, were coming in there for the purpose of dictating to them.

Dr. WARBURTON. I could not see any difference in the percentage of farmers who signed in the counties in which Mr. Hirth was interested, and those in which he was not interested.

Mr. CANNON. I was down there, and drove through that country. I talked with them, and I had that advantage of you.

Dr. WARBURTON. All we had were the census figures.

Mr. CANNON. That was your misfortune. You had only the reports your appointees sent you and you were anxious to believe them.

Mr. HART. Of course, as to those figures you used, you could not tell what variable factors entered into them."

Mr. SANDLIN. All right, Doctor; you may proceed with your state

ment.

Dr. WARBURTON. Do you want any further discussion of these allotments to the States, Judge?

EFFECTIVE DATE OF REDUCTION IN PAYMENTS

Mr. SANDLIN. I want to ask you this: When does the Executive order become effective on the 25-percent reduction?

Dr. WARBURTON. The Executive order was submitted to Congress on the 10th of June, to be effective in 60 days. Then on the 15th of June, the day that Congress adjourned, the Senate passed a joint resolution asking the President to defer the effectiveness of section 18 of the Executive order, which is the one affecting these appropriations, until the opening of the regular session of Congress; that is, to resubmit it to Congress at the opening of the session, and then let it run 60 days before it became effective.

Mr. SANDLIN. It is not effective yet, then?

Dr. WARBURTON. So that, figuring from the date of the opening of Congress, it would become effective on March 4.

Now, we had to take this into consideration in making payments to the States as of January 1. These appropriations are allotted to the States for semiannual payment on July 1 and January 1, and with the order becoming effective on the 4th of March, it would naturally affect a part of the payment due as of January 1. So the question was submitted to the Comptroller General, and his decision was that payment should be made on a basis of approximately 83%1⁄2 percent of the semiannual allotment. He arrived at that figure in this way: There are 181 days from the 1st of January to the 30th of June and 62 days from the 1st of January until the 3d of March, the order becoming effective on the 4th of March. For that 62-day period the States were entitled to receive the full portion of the allotment, that is, sixty-two one hundred and eighty-firsts of the semiannual allotment, and for the remaining 119 days they should receive 75 percent of one hundred and nineteen one hundred and eighty-firsts. Reducing that to decimals, you get about 83%1⁄2 percent of the semiannual allotment; and that was the basis on which the payments are being made as of January 1.

So it means a reduction in the annual allotment this year of a little over 8 percent. That is, it is a reduction for a third of the year.

Mr. SANDLIN. What effect will that have on the reduction in the salaries of the county agents?

DR. WARBURTON. You mean the effect for the remainder of this year?

Mr. SANDLIN. Well, say if the full cut prevails for 1935.

Dr. WARBURTON. The cut for a full fiscal year would amount to approximately $2,000,000 of funds allotted to the States. Twentyfive percent of the appropriation would be a little over $2,000,000. The State and county funds, as you know, have been reduced in many States, and that has been only in small part by reason of counties discontinuing the service entirely. Much more of the total reduction has been from reduction in State appropriations and reductions in appropriations of counties which continue to employ agents. The Federal part of the appropriation is now a larger part of the total than it was 2 or 3 years ago; so that a reduction of $2,000,000 in the Federal allotments will be more serious now than it would have been 3 or 4 years ago, when the States and counties were providing more money.

In most counties the total salary of a county agent has been reduced to a point where it cannot be reduced very much more and have the man stay on the job if it is possible for him to get anything else to do; so that a reduction of $2,000,000 in the allotments to the States, unless the money is replaced from some other source, will result in a very considerable reduction in the staff of extension workers, and that means workers of all kinds the administrative and specialist staffs at the colleges and the agents in the counties. I think the general tendency would be to make as much of the reduction as possible in the State staffs and continue the county agents, because they are the ones who are in most direct contact with the farmers, and several of these acts provide that the larger portion of the Federal funds must be expended for salaries of county extension agents.

PERCENTAGE OF FEDERAL FUNDS EXPENDED IN COUNTIES

Mr. SANDLIN. Approximately what percent of the appropriation goes to county agents?

Dr. WARBURTON. You mean of the Federal appropriations, Judge? Mr. SANDLIN. Yes; the Federal appropriations.

Dr. WARBURTON. I will have to do a little figuring to give you that because the statement I have here gives separately the county agricultural agent, the home demonstration, and the boys' and girls' club work. So I will have to supply that figure for the record. But my recollection is that in most States 65 to 70 percent of all Federal, State, and county extension funds goes into the employment and support of county extension agents, men and women.

Mr. SANDLIN. That takes in the home economics and all?

Dr. WARBURTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SANDLIN. In other words, to those working in the counties? Dr. WARBURTON. Yes, sir.

[NOTE. The records for 1934 indicate 57.1 percent of all Federal extension funds are expended in counties.]