Mr. SUTTON. Then you can actually blame these inequities right on someone up here in Washington.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Mr. Sutton, at the time when this cotton program was first being born we knew that the BAE official figures would probably be used. If so, we wanted to get out all the inequities we could.

Mr. SUTTON. If you knew these inequities were going to occur, did you not think it your duty as an official of the Department of Agriculture who testified before the committees to testify to the committees that such would exist?

Mr. BURKHEAD. I do not think it was our place to testify before the committees.

Mr. SUTTON. Do you not think it is your duty?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We would be glad to, sir.

Mr. SUTTON. Do you not think it is your duty to do it, without being glad to? Do you not think you should come up and inform the committees of what is going to happen under such a law?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We did not know exactly what was going to happen. Mr. SUTTON. On June 21 when you issued these regulations you knew what was going to happen.

Mr. BURKHEAD. We have been making cotton estimates for 75 years. We would still go on and call the facts as we see them.

Mr. SUTTON. But did not in this case.

you

Mr. BURKHEAD. Yes, sir. I think the Congress wants that.

Mr. SUTTON. But it was agreeable 100 percent, according to letters which we have in the record from the Department of Agriculture, that they were a hundred percent in accord with Public Law 272. In fact, the Department of Agriculture helped write it. Some of the men who are present today sat with us in executive session and pointed out some of the inequities in the law and we changed the law at their suggestion. What I would like to find out is, should we not take part of the blame ourselves instead of blaming someone else, because representatives of the Department of Agriculture, which was advising us on the subcommittee in writing this bill, Mr. Dean, Mr. Bell, Mr. Bagwell and Mr. Woolley, were sitting with us in executive session. When we got through with the bill the chairman of our subcommittee asked, "Is the bill all right?" I believe the subcommittee will verify that they said it is a good bill. They wholeheartedly endorsed it.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Mr. Sutton, we are certainly not going to hold up the white flag of purity about any statistical matters like that. Mr. SUTTON. Do you not think it is time we took part of the blame ourselves instead of blaming it on somebody else?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We are certainly willing to take whatever blame is due us.

Mr. SUTTON. I would say in this instance a hundred percent of the blame is on the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. BURKHEAD. I imagine if the program was started again we would make some changes.

Mr. SUTTON. I am too. In fact, I would not listen to the Department of Agriculture again.

Mr. GATHINGS. I have some questions I would like to ask at this time.

Mr. POAGE. It will not take me long on this point. I do not want to get completely off the subject.

You testified a while ago, Mr. Burkhead, that up until approximately December 2 it would have been possible to make changes in your estimates as to the cotton acreage in the State of Texas. Did you have a similar cut-off date on the estimate as to the war crops?

Mr. BURKHEAD. No, sir. I would like to explain our particular participation in the war-crop part, if I may.

Mr. POAGE. Surely.

Mr. BURKHEAD. Last February 21, 1949, Mr. Wells, Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics,.called me at home. The next day was a holiday. He said, "Would you like to work tomorrow?"

I said, "Sure. We are used to working on holidays down there.” He said the Cotton Branch wanted to make some preliminary calculations on possible credits that might be due to war crops in connection with the cotton program. That is the first time I ever heard of the fact that war crops were going to be considered. So we came down and we have worked from that day to this in one way or another on the cotton program.

Our part in the war-crop work was to furnish the Cotton Branch people and Grain Branch people all the available information we had by counties that would assist them in making these determinations in the States as to the war-crop credits. We had county estimates for eight crops which constituted in 1949 about 60 percent of the total crops harvested. We made those available to the PMA.

In cases where we did not have anything else, we did finally agree to furnish-as guides only, not as absolute minima or maxima-crop reporting district information on acreages of practically all crops that were considered war crops.

Mr. POAGE. On what date did you stop furnishing information? Mr. BURKHEAD. We have not stopped. If they want information today we will get it for them.

Mr. POAGE. In other words, there has been no similar cut-off date on war crops comparable to that on cotton?

Mr. BURKHEAD. We are always subject to request by the Department or anyone else for information.

Mr. POAGE. Mr. Bell, on November 23, 1949, the Production and Marketing Administration sent out what was known as Cotton Memorandum No. 82 which related to war crops and raised a question as to the possibility of county committees making further adjustments. In that you say that it cannot be done. You explain that any alteration in the original determination of farm war-crop credits would subject all States, and county and farm allotments to possible question as to whether they had been established in accordance with basic legislation.

Let me come on down on the second page to where you say:

No further adjustments shall be permitted in farm war-crop credits from those originally determined and reported in the county and State summaries for determining 1950 cotton acreage allotments for States, counties, and farms. The State committee shall so advise the county PMA committees in order that there be no misunderstanding with respect to the matter in regard to cotton acreage allotments for 1950.

This is signed by William B. Crawley. Your agency did send out that kind of notice, did it not?

Mr. BELL. That is right, sir.

Mr. POAGE. That was at least 10 days prior to the time that Mr. Burkhead has told us when no further changes could be made as to cotton acreage. Is that right?

Mr. BELL. Yes.

Mr. POAGE. Had you been willing to make an adjustment of as much as 200 acres in the war-crop history in the State of Texas in 1946 or 1947, it would have thrown Texas, under the formula that we had all understood would obtain and not under the "California Gadget," would it not?

Mr. BELL. I think it would have taken a little more than a hundred acres, Mr. Poage.

Mr. POAGE. I said 200. I will agree with you that it would take 100 a year for those 2 years.

Mr. BELL. It depends on whether you are speaking in terms of a 2year base or a 4-year base.

Mr. POAGE. We could have gone under a 4-year base.

Mr. BELL. Then the change would have had to have been approximately 400 acres.

Mr. POAGE. Then had you discovered as much as 400 acres of war crops that were grown in the State of Texas that were not included, it would have placed Texas in the same category as Georgia, as Mississippi, as Alabama, as North Carolina, and each county in Texas would have given credit for its war crops.

Mr. BELL. If that much change had been made in Texas and no changes had been made in any other State, I think it would have worked out that way; yes.

Mr. POAGE. No change was made in Texas, was it, in the war crops? Mr. BELL. No change was made from the day they submitted their first figures to us. From the day the Texas State committee reported their war crop credits to us.

Mr. POAGE. Do you know what date that was, or approximately? Mr. BELL. I do not have it with me. I can get the date of the letter. Mr. POAGE. Was it in November or October?

Mr. BELL. I am sure it was in October because we notified the States of a final date near October 20. We notified them to get their warcrop credits in to us.

Mr. POAGE. So you got it about the same time or maybe a little before they got the cotton acreage?

Mr. BELL. That is right.

Mr. POAGE. And you cut it off and said, "We will listen to no evidence no matter how strongly you can substantiate your contention, no matter how much evidence you can bring. We will listen to no evidence about the existence of war crops." But during at least a portion of that same period you would listen to any evidence they brought in to show that there had been more cotton grown. That was true, was it not?

Mr. BELL. I wonder if I might make a little more complete summary of this whole thing? You will recall that Public Law 272 makes it a requirement upon the Secretary to announce to the farmers the allotment before the referendum, which was December 15. I am sure you are aware of the fact that there is a tremendous amount of regulations, instructions, and forms which must be issued, and a tremendous amount

of computation work that must go on in this whole process. You eventually get yourself in the position that if you meet a certain deadline you must set other deadlines ahead of that. We were squeezing ourselves into a tight schedule, trying to meet the 15th of December date.

We knew we could never meet that part of the law unless we got war-crop credits in from the States so we could work out all the allotments.

Mr. SUTTON. Yet you told us in the commitee, when we had November 15 in the bill, if we made it December 15 it would give you ample time.

Mr. BELL. And we met December 15 all right. We knew, according to the schedule which we had to work under, that sometime along about the 15th to the 20th of October we had to start the machine rolling here and in the States turning out State and county allotments. After we had all the State allotments computed and out-and I think all the county allotments were out in every State we were asked by a State committee if it would be permissible for them to go back and take farms on which they had computed war-crop credits and take a part or all of that credit away from those farms. We told them under this memorandum absolutely not. The law required the farm to get the war-crop credits as specified and there was no authority for a county committee to take that credit away from that farm and deny that farm the allotment after such credit had been allowed the county and State. If they had gone back and taken that war-crop credit off those farms according to the procedure of the act, that same credit. should come out of the county history. If you took that credit out of the county history you would take it out of the history for the State. If you took it out of the State history for that State, you would change, theoretically, every State and county allotment in the United States. They had all been set. We had to move. We could not sit still in program operation and get out allotments on time. Therefore, we put out this memorandum. They had set every farm's war-crop credits. It had all been checked with the farmers. We had to move ahead on the program.

Consequently, they could not go back and take a farmer's war-crop credits away from him because they wanted to deny him that allot

ment.

Mr. POAGE. I understand the difficulties of making those changes. They were exactly the same as the difficulties that existed in making a change with regard to the record of plantings of cotton. A change of 100 acres in the record of actual cotton planted would have involved all the same difficulties. By another one of this long chain of strange coincidences you announced at least 10 days earlier that you could not change any estimates of war crops and kept, for at least a 10-day period, the field open to make a change in the amount of cotton planted. By a strange coincidence, had you been able to change the war-crop credits, had you allowed yourself to listen to evidence that could have been presented and that I am sure you realized would have been presented that there actually were 400 acres of war crops that you had not found, then you would have gotten a different result in Texas.

Mr. BELL. This question about deducting some war-crop credits from some farms did not come up in Texas. It came up in another State.

Mr. POAGE. But your action precluded, in Texas, a review of the war-crop totals at a time when it did not preclude a review of the cotton totals. You knew at that time that it was only possible to apply the law as Congress had understood it would be applied by reviewing those war-crop credits, but you closed the door rapidly before anybody could possibly get a foot in there to make sure that nobody could even offer you any evidence.

I talked to Mr. Bagwell and to Mr. Hunter about 10 days later and suggested if they wanted to solve this thing without litigation they should let us actually find what it should be.

Mr. BAGWELL. It was about December 12 that you talked to us. Mr. POAGE. It might have been 2 weeks later but it was after the closing date. The door was closed so that no matter what kind of evidence anybody brought in it would not be listened to because if, perchance, the PMA were shown to have made a mistake, then the will of Congress would have been carried out and a million and a half acres of credit would be given in Texas counties that the law said should be given. By closing that door it was certain that that credit would not be given. That is exactly the result of your action, is it not, Mr. Bell? I am not trying to make you say that you did it for that purpose, but that is the result of it, is it not?

Mr. BELL. It would not matter whether you changed the history in Texas or some other State. The end result might be the same so far as Texas was concerned. For example, you could add so many acres in Texas or take so many acres off some other State and it might have thrown the State of Texas from one side of the formula to another. You could have accomplished exactly the same thing by leaving Texas figures right where they were and going down and making changes enough in Georgia to have thrown Texas over on the side that it eventually went to.

I have in my files a table No. 2, which came out of the Memphis meeting which formed the basis for Public Law 272 for apportioning the national allotment to States. That table shows that the State of Texas had a good possibility of going on the 1947-48 formula.

Mr. POAGE. You never presented that table to the House Committee on Agriculture, though, did you?

Mr. BELL. We were asked one doy by the Committee to work up the formula with the best statistics we had and we gave that table to the Committee. I do not know whether you ever saw it or not. That table showed Texas was going to go on the 1947-48 formula.

Mr. DEAN. Mr. Poage, I believe that table from the Memphis agreement is in the record.

Mr. POAGE. Let us check it and find out. If it is in the record, it was presented there as part of the argument of some of those gentlemen who came up here from Memphis, was it not?

Mr. BELL. If the Memphis table was presented, it would have been presented by them.

Mr. POAGE. You never presented anything of that kind to the committee and you never put anything of that kind in the record, did you? Mr. BELL. We worked up another table at a later date at the request of Mr. Pace and presented it to the committee which showed Texas to be on the 1947-48 side, based on the best figures we had at that time. Mr. PACE. You do not mean that fact was pointed out, Mr. Bell, do you?