body estimates, in order to get round figures, that we had 10,000 acres. The law says that if we had the 10,000 or if the acres were actually there then that figure shall be used.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Mr. Poage, I cannot answer your fine points there as to what went on in the mind of Mr. Childs.

Mr. POAGE. You have told us that in the case of these counties, for instance, it did not make any difference if you did come out to 3,226 acres, you would call it 3,200 acres. When it came to the State you rounded it out to the thousands. You never used a figure less than a thousand in the State of Texas for the State total.

Mr. BURKHEAD. We do not in any State, Mr. Poage.

Mr. POAGE. Is it not perfectly obvious that you might have less than 10,000 or more than 10,000 and you would still call it 10,000?

Mr. BURKHEAD. I would say "Yes" to that. In any estimating there is bound to be some margin of error.

Mr. POAGE. But if you estimated it at less or more than 10,000, you would still round it out to the 10,000?

Mr. BURKHEAD. If it was nearer to 10,000 than 9,000, we would; yes, sir.

Mr. POAGE. Let us find out whether your actual estimate was less than 10,000 or more than 10,000 and by how much. You cannot tell us this morning but you can get those figures for us, surely.

Mr. BURKHEAD. I can ask Mr. Childs to give us those figures.

Mr. POAGE. Exactly, and I would appreciate it if you would get those figures for us.

Mr. BURKHEAD. I will be glad to.

Mr. POAGE. That we may know from what figure you estimated this 10,000.

Mr. BURKHEAD. We will contact Mr. Childs and get some information from him on it, although, as I say, he is bound by administrative rules to round to the nearest thousand acres.

I believe, Mr. Poage, that as far as BAE's estimating is concerned, the 93 acres is irrelevant to the case; we would still have called a spade a spade if it looked that way. It might as well have been 93 acres less, which might have thrown you into another "gadget," is that right?

Mr. POAGE. In all frankness, I think that the Department of Agriculture or someone in it deliberately gave Texas acres that we were not entitled to in order to put us under this "California gadget." If you want to know what I am thinking, that is exactly what I think.

Mr. BURKHEAD. May I emphatically say for the record that that is not the way the Bureau of Agricultural Economics operates? Mr. POAGE. Everybody says they do not operate that way, but the results are that way and our people are suffering. The growers of 1,400,000 acres of war crops in Texas are being denied the credit that the United States Congress told them they should have because somebody for the first time in 4 years readjusted the figures in Texas and in Texas only, of all of the southwestern States, and did it by an amount which just brought us under that wire by 93 acres. Such a long series of coincidences has occurred that I frankly do not believe it happened by coincidence.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Mr. Poage, may I say that as far as we are concerned there was no coincidence whatsoever in the way it was handled. As I say, we have another case in Georgia. I did not know how many

acres were concerned. We added 4,000 in 1 year and nine in another. We did not ask Mr. Breedlove in Georgia whether or not that would throw him under the "California gadget." Some day you may be glad to have that history. It is only fair to give the cotton producers the best we have. Whether it throws them in one gadget or another, we would still operate that way. So far as I know, we will continue to operate that way.

Mr. POAGE. Until what date are you willing to accept changes, if you can find that you have overlooked something or that there has been an error?

Mr. BURKHEAD. You mean about the 1948 figure, sir?

Mr. POAGE. That is right.

Mr. BURKHEAD. We have closed out all changes now. We feel that all the evidence we can get is already available and no further changes should be made.

Mr. POAGE. On what date did you close them?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We consulted with the PMA people in Washington. When did you finally send your quotas out, Mr. Bell?

Mr. BELL. On December 2 they were announced officially.

Mr. BURKHEAD. After that date, as far as making changes are concerned, we were not making any more. We feel that all the evidence we will have until at least the middle of May is already available.

Mr. POAGE. You were willing to make changes had evidence been presented to you prior to December 2?

Mr. BURKHEAD. Yes, sir, we certainly were.

Mr. POAGE. Then let me ask Mr. Bell a question. You had been in possession of these figures, as I understand the testimony, for something like 5 weeks prior to December 2, had you not?

Mr. BELL. I am sure that is about right.

Mr. POAGE. You realized what it did to the State of Texas, did you not?

Mr. BELL. I realized the minute we finished the determinations what the base year for Texas would be, but not until that moment did I know what the exact final effects would be.

Mr. POAGE. Not until when?

Mr. BELL. I realized it the moment we finished the over-all determinations.

Mr. POAGE. When did you do that?

Mr. BELL. If you want an exact date, I would have to check it back but it was about the middle of November.

Mr. POAGE. So after you had finished that determination you realized for at least a period of 3 weeks that Mr. Burkhead had kept his books open in which you realized what you were doing in the State of Texas by this calculation.

Mr. BELL. I think I made the statement that the allotments were announced officially December 2. According to the Administrative Procedures Act, allotments and regulations which the Secretary issues in connection with these programs are not official until they have been published in the Federal Register.

Mr. POAGE. Yes, and that is some days.

Mr. BELL. Along about the middle of November we completed the computation of the State and county allotments and sent them to the States on a tentative basis in order that they could proceed with their

necessary listing sheet work, in order to get the allotments to the farmers before the 15th of

Mr. POAGE. When did you send those?

Mr. BELL. About the middle of November, as I recall.

Mr. POAGE. As a matter of fact, you sent them on November 3, did you not? At least I have a copy of your announcement, which is Cotton Memorandum No. 3, addressed to the chairmen of the State committees, from the Assistant Administrator for Production, and it is dated November 3, 1949. The subject is Computation of the 1950 Cotton Acreage Allotments and Related Terms. In that you do recite what you have done, as I understand it, and you have made at least tentative allotments as of that date.

Mr. BELL. That may well be the date.

Mr. POAGE. Then if that is true, whether it is the 3d or the 13th or the 15th, there was a period at least of 2 or 3 weeks prior to the date of December 2 that Mr. Burkhead has given us during which you knew what these calculations did to the State of Texas.

Mr. BELL. That is right.

Mr. POAGE. And during which time they could have been changed. You say they should not have been changed, but they could have been changed, could they not?

Mr. BELL. Technically, if the basic data had been changed, the entire formula could have been reworked, yes.

Mr. POAGE. I understand Mr. Burkhead said that could have been done up until December 2. That is what you said, was it not? Mr. BURKHEAD. Roughly that time.

Mr. POAGE. I am not trying to pin it down to the hours, but at least there was a period of 2 or 3 weeks in which it could have been done.

Mr. BURKHEAD. I know how the cotton people have operated, both in the States and in Washington. They called on the BAE for official figures. When the Crop Reporting Board approved them and turned them over to PMA they never questioned them.

Mr. POAGE. They did not question them, but you have just admitted that you knew that you could not be a hundred-percent accurate in those figures.

Mr. BURKHEAD. I will have to say that is true.

Mr. POAGE. Mr. Bell, you knew that those figures could not be 100percent accurate, did you not?

Mr. BELL. We never questioned the accuracy of the figures.

Mr. POAGE. I understand, but you certainly would not suggest that you had ever been under the impression that those figures which involved, in the State of Texas, something over 8,800,000 acres would be absolutely correct? You were under no illusion that those figures were correct even down to a thousand acres, were you?

Mr. BELL. If you are talking in terms of what the estimates were based on, what actually happened in the State, I do not think any of us are ever under the impression that they are 100 percent technically

accurate.

Mr. POAGE. That is right. It would have been perfectly possible to find an error of 100 acres in the State of Texas, an actual error of 100 acres. I do not think anybody will deny that, will they?

Mr. BURKHEAD. An actual error of a hundred acres? Mr. Poage, that word "actual" gets me.

Mr. POAGE. You found gins that you did not know existed.
Mr. BURKHEAD. It was not really our job to find those gins.
Mr. POAGE. I understand.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Who found those gins? How did they happen to find them?

Mr. POAGE. Well, they had to find them, Tom. They could not have gotten 10,000 acres without finding them so they found them. Mr. BURKHEAD. Mr. Abernethy, here is how we found the ginsMr. ABERNETHY. Of course, it is a coincidence that the gins were found about the time they got ready to make their allotments down in Texas.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Regarding those gins in Texas, Mr. Abernethy, we have assisted the Bureau of the Census-and we do all the time because we use their ginnings in preparing our current estimates-in unearthing new gins that start operation, old gins that go out. They are not always on the plus side. Sometimes they are on the minus side. We assist in locating old gins that go out of operation or burn down that have not reported to the Bureau of the Census. We turn all that information over to the Census Bureau. We do not touch it or use it or consider it official until they have given us the green light and admit that they do not have it in their existing records.

So far as finding new gins in Texas is concerned, our men down there are always on the alert for just that kind of thing.

Mr. POAGE. Are the gins always new?

Mr. BURKHEAD. No, sir. As I say, it is usually as much on the minus side as on the plus side.

Mr. POAGE. But the gin may have been there for several years and may not necessarily have been built this year, I suppose?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We have new gins that started operating in Georgia. They started operating in 1947. Sometimes a gin is taken over. Sometimes it is burned down and rebuilt.

Mr. POAGE. I am primarily interested in Texas. I understand that all these gins were brand new when they found them, or might they have been operating for some time?

Mr. MORGAN. One of the gins, I understand, was new in 1948.

Mr. POAGE. What about the others?

Mr. MORGAN. I do not know.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Were they new gins or new bales that you found, bales that you had not counted?

Mr. BURKHEAD. New bales.

MI. ABERNETHY. Who found them?

Mr. BURKHEAD. Our State statistician found them.

Mr. ABERNETHY. How did he happen to find them?

Mr. BURKHEAD. Many ways. One is based on reports he gets from census enumerators, based on information that the county committees may have sent into the State PMA committee and they in turn send it to the State statistician.

Mr. ABERNETHY. How many bales did he find?

Mr. BURKHEAD. Three thousand, two hundred and ten.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Three thousand, two hundred and ten bales. In other words, the State statistician, without being facetious, just happened to find, at the time they were getting ready to go back under acreage allotments, 3,210 bales of cotton that had not previously been counted.

Mr. BURKHEAD. No, he did not happen to find it. He has done that inany times in a big State like Texas.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Did he find that those ginnings came from certain areas?

Mr. BURKHEAD. Yes, sir, we know that.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Were those new gins or old gins?

Mr. BURKHEAD. One of them here is a new gin.

Mr. ABERNETHY. How many bales did they gin in 1948 in one county?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We do not have that; we will be glad to get it. Mr. ABERNETHY. How many other gins were involved?

Mr. MORGAN. There were three gins involved.

Mr. ABERNETHY. The other two were old gins. How long had they been there?

Mr. BURKHEAD. That I cannot answer without looking up the record. Mr. ABERNETHY. Do you have a cotton census enumerator in that county?

Mr. BURKHEAD. I am not sure of that.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Or in the counties where the gins were?
Mr. BURKHEAD. I am not sure of that.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Anyhow, it came to light that there were three gins in Texas, two of which were old gins, that had ginned thirty-someodd-hundred bales of cotton, that had not been reported in 1948. However, the BAE statistician and the Census Department would have to admit that the ginning from those old gins had been reported for the years prior to 1948. Since they have been reported for the years prior to 1948, how did they happen to lose them in 1948?

Mr. BURKHEAD. I am not sure of that, Mr. Abernethy, without getting into that situation a little deeper and being sure of the facts. Mr. ABERNETHY. Can I ask another question, Mr. Poage?

Mr. POAGE. Surely.

Mr. ABERNETHY. How many States in the belt received increases in their plantings as determined by BAE?

Mr. BURKHEAD. Increases?

Mr. ABERNETHY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Missouri.

Mr. ABERNETHY. For what year was that?

Mr. BURKHEAD. 1946, 1947, and 1948.

Mr. ABERNETHY. For 3 years they were increased.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Georgia, 1947 and 1948.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Georgia, 1947 and 1948.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Florida, 1945, 1946, 1947 and 1948.

Mr. PACE. You want to add 1946 to that on Georgia, too.

Mr. BURKHEAD. The State estimate for Georgia was not changed in

1946, Mr. Pace.

Mr. ABERNETHY. They balanced in 1946, did they not?

Mr. BURKHEAD. That is right. Texas, 1947; New Mexico, 1947; Kentucky, 1946, 1947, and 1948. That is all.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Did those changes result in increases in the overall planting?

Mr. BURKHEAD. They all resulted, Mr. Abernethy, in increases. No State was decreased.