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Mr. TOBEY. How long do you expect the hearings to continue on this bill?

The CHAIRMAN. There are some Members of Congress who want to be heard. My thought was that we might set tomorrow or Thursday for hearing them, then set another day for hearing the President's report, and close the hearings.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Some mention was made here the other day, Mr. Chairman, that there was some opposition that wants to be heard on the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. LUCAS. It was my understanding that there were some who wished to speak in opposition to the bill.

As I said in the beginning, Mr. Chairman, I have an open mind on this bill, and I would like, as the gentleman from Mississippi just pointed out, to support the right kind of a bill, and to date no one has appeared in opposition to the bill. It seems to me that if there are those who are opposed it would be well for us to hear them. My own thought is that the committee should have the benefit, perhaps, of any suggestions that the opposition might wish to make.

The CHAIRMAN. I tried to make it clear at the time we started these hearings that this and all of the other bills we have before us are tentative, and that we would conduct more or less of an experiment in having general hearings rather than apply them to any specific bill. I simply introduced this bill in order that the committee would have something before it and could then determine what kind of a bill it wanted after the hearings were over. It rather seemed from our experience that the better method is to try to work out a bill of some kind for the committee to have before it when it starts hearings. This particular bill is simply a part of all of those that have been introduced on this subject. H. R. 8 is no more under consideration than the committee's draft no. 2, or any other suggestions that may go into the final bill. That is the thought I had on this matter; it is difficult to start before we have anything tangible before us. I thought it might be well, on the general program, to have 2 or 3 days' suggestions from farm groups, and farmers, and perhaps those in the Department or anybody else who has anything to suggest to the committee before we undertake to write the final draft of the bill.

Mr. LUCAS. May I offer this suggestion, Mr. Chairman: I am a lawyer and have always been compelled to observe the rules of pleading. It may be I am in a legal rut which does not apply to hearings before a congressional committee; however, I am of the opinion that, when we start consideration of the bill on the general farm program, instead of calling witnesses and holding hearings at the beginning we can make more constructive progress if we take up, paragraph by paragraph, or whatever method the committee desires in a complete and general discussion of the merits and demerits of the bill. Then when witnesses come before this committee, the chairman or any other member desiring to interrogate them on particular points will have a better basis for so doing. When we have finished we will be in pretty good shape to know about everything that we desire about the then pending bill and can vote intelligently.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for his suggestion, and I want to state that we have proceeded in that manner two or three

times; the committee has felt that it should have some hearings before we undertook to put the suggestions down in tangible form. So we have followed that suggestion before.

Mr. LUCAS. I see.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose we hear Mr. Jackson now. Will you give your full name and for whom you speak, Mr. Jackson?

STATEMENT OF GARDNER JACKSON, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON RURAL SOCIAL PLANNING, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. JACKSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, may I have Mr. Webster Powell sit with me; he has been working with me on this subject.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. JACKSON. My name is Gardner Jackson: I am chairman of the National Committee on Rural Social Planning.

Mr. DOXEY. Chairman of what?

Mr. JACKSON. Chairman of the Committee on Rural Social Planning, and also speak for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union.

Mr. HOPE. Will you elaborate on that matter a little so the committee will have in the record something of the nature of its work, and who comprises the Committee on Rural Social Planning, Mr. Jackson?

Mr. JACKSON. I have a partial list of the members of the committee on my own letterhead here. I am chairman of it; and, it includes several Members of Congress. Hon. Thomas R. Amlie, Senator Nye, Hon. Byron N. Scott, and various university and college professors. Mrs. James Landis, Dr. Sidney E. Goldstein, General Glassford-I could let the whole list go in, if you want it, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HOPE. The committee has been organized comparatively recently for the purpose of studying this particular subject we are considering today; is that it?

Mr. JACKSON. The way it happened to be organized is this: As a result of my experience with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, where I was for 2 years, I became interested in the problem and when I left the triple A, I organized the committee to inquire into this problem and try to help get some representation here in Washington for the sharecropper and agricultural worker, principally.

Mr. HOPE. Then you have studied this particular subject, I assume.. Mr. JACKSON. That is correct.

Mr. FULMER. How long were you with the triple A?

Mr. JACKSON. About 2 years.

Mr. FULMER. What State are you from?

Mr. JACKSON. I am from Colorado, Mr. Cummings' State.

Mr. FULMER. What was the nature of your business before you went with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration?

Mr. JACKSON. I had been a newspaper man most of my life.

Mr. MITCHELL. Did you ever do any farming?

Mr. JACKSON. Mr. Mitchell, I knew you would ask me that. I can not say, really, that I have. My father was a Quaker farmer in Pennsylvania, however.

Mr. MITCHELL. You are a farmer by proxy?

Mr. JACKSON. Well, I spent most of my summers on that family farm.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Is this organization financed in any way by the Federal Government?

Mr. JACKSON. No, indeed; it is not.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Who finances it?

Mr. JACKSON. That is an embarrassing question. I am afraid I do, quite a bit of it; I put in more, perhaps, than is good for my family.

Mr. ANDRESEN. You do get some contributions?

Mr. JACKSON. I do; from friends, and so on.

Mr. ANDRESEN. You are very patriotic.

Mr. JACKSON. It's a matter of sending out appeals to those we know who might be interested in the problem of getting representation here for this group.

Mr. LUCAS. When did you leave the Triple A?

Mr. JACKSON. Just about 2 years ago.

Mr. LUCAS. Why did you leave?

Mr. JACKSON. I was asked to leave, along with Jerome Frank and Lee Pressman.

Mr. FULMER. Did you take part in the sharecropper investigation in Arkansas?

Mr. JACKSON. I did not actually participate in it. I was one of those who was consulted on the question in Washington.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Jackson, would you prefer to proceed a while before being interrupted, or would you prefer to have questions as you go along?

Mr. JACKSON. Just any way you desire, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose you proceed for a little while without interruption.

Mr. JACKSON. It is quite satisfactory to me to have questions asked.

Naturally, I think the committee will understand that in trying to express the point of view of the sharecropper and the agricultural worker we do feel that the bill as drawn is wholly inadequate, that it is not nearly enough; that it limits the undertaking to a land purchasing operation for the top group and does not really touch the dispossessed mass in agriculture. We are thoroughly in accord with a good deal of the testimony that has gone into the record, particularly with the point made by Mr. Wallace before the Appropriations Committee on the deficiency bill, where he made it plain that he felt the amount involved in this bill is entirely inadequate to take care of the necessary, actual relief and grant and loan operations for the vast mass of dispossessed in agriculture.

There is one point in the bill that I do want to question especially, and that is the matter of the committee set-up, composed of a farmer, a business man, and an experienced credit man. From my encounter with the administration and with the sharecroppers and agricultural workers, one of the difficulties I have found and they have found is to get any actual attention through the county control committees. No sharecropper and no agricultural worker has ever been represented on any such committee. These classes are supposed to be the beneficiaries under this legislation. It seems pretty definite

to my mind that they ought to have representation, as a matter of common justice and democratic procedure.

Mr. LUCAS. Are they organized?

Mr. JACKSON. They are getting organized quite extensively.

The CHAIRMAN. May I suggest there that the bill says a farmer, and he might be a sharecropper or a tenant; it does not exclude them.

Mr. JACKSON. Yes; if the word "farmer" is not construed to mean the man who owns the farm, he might be a tenant farmer, but I think it should be specified.

The CHAIRMAN. In reference to that particular provision: I believe the members of the committee felt that there should be a local committee, but we are not yet certain as to how that committee should be selected and how it should be constituted. We have not yet had any final suggestions as to how it should be worked out.

Mr. JACKSON. Well, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, after encountering many of these individual sharecroppers and agricultural workers-there is a large body of them in the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and other unions-I recognize that the problem of getting adequate leadership for them is naturally a difficult one. But I do think the union movement going on among them is throwing up people who are qualified as leaders to represent them. I would suggest if such a set-up is finally agreed upon that the unions in the various areas where there are unions be asked for advice on the matter of representation.

Now, there is one further aspect on this set-up in the phrasing of these mandatory provisions, that nobody can become a beneficiary of this legislation unless he is certified by the local committee. I have talked with some of my lawyer friends about that, and though I hesitate to cite the two decisions, having to do with the question of constitutionality of that provision, I am advised by them that the Guffey coal decision and the Schechter decision, they think, clearly contravene this provision contained in the mandatory provisions of this county set-up; they feel that such a provision as that is a delegation of governmental authority to private persons who are not employees of the Government and to those who cannot be expected to supervise and control the administration of the act.

And, furthermore, as a practical matter, it seems reasonable to us that those county committees might be composed of persons who will have private interests which will be affected by the administration of the farm tenancy program in that county. Then I have quotations from these two decisions which seem to apply. I am not a lawyer, so I am not prepared affirmatively to state that that is so.

Now, to approach our feeling about the general problem, Mr. Chairman, I want to read a few paragraphs from a letter we prepared and sent to Secretary Henry Wallace and Rexford Tugwell before the President's tenancy committee was appointed. In that letter to them, which Mr. Wallace asked us to prepare, we said:

It should be stated at the outset that no one method of attack on the evils of tenancy offers any justifiable hope of permanent betterment. Regional differences in agricultural practices and in economic and social conditions of the rural population are too varied. The problems of race and the attendant suppression of all civil liberties of various minority groups add immeasurably to the difficulties in areas like the South, Imperial Valley, etc. In an attempt to

solve the problem quickly there is a danger that we will fasten permanently on ourselves the horse and buggy economy of the smaller European nations, the economy of small individual peasant holdings lacking the most efficient and uptodate techniques, equipment, and marketing facilities. Such a rigid program of small-sized family farms scattered over the countryside would at best serve to anchor millions of our rural people to a subsistence or a near subsistence level.

The Bankhead-Jones Act (S. 2367) which passed the Senate, was an improvement over the original bill (S. 1800), in that it recognized the complexity of the American tenant problem.

I might interpolate here that I was much interested in Professor Gee, one of the first witnesses before this committee, and wish to call the particular attention of this committee to the paragraph he stressed in the old Bankhead bill requiring that a farm to be sold under that measure must be of adequate size and fertility to indicate a reasonable return to the beneficiary. That was an amendment which we were able to have incorporated in that bill on the Senate side, through various friends over there.

We said further in our letter to Mr. Wallace:

The House bill, which died in committee, was a much less adequate measure, in our opinion. S. 2367 offered three alternative roads for the ruined landless farmer to travel: ownership through the payment of annuities, 5-year leases from the Federal Government, and producers' cooperatives. But this act fell far short of being adequate. The wording of the sections of the bill which mention the last two alternatives, leasing and cooperative farming, and the overwhelming emphasis on ownership make it clear that the act intended to transform sharecroppers, tenants and farm laborers into small owners or peasants.

And it is quite possible, if the measure now before you is enacted as the final measure, that would be the 'intention, I should say, of that measure, that is, of this present measure.

To illustrate: While the possibility of a 5-year lease from the United States Government was covered in section 6, the act contains no provisions for the fixing or adjustment of rent, renewal of the lease, compensation to the tenant for improvements made, protection against eviction, or other provisions which would make leasing feasible. There can be no doubt that the main purpose of the act was to set up an American peasantry.

Our committee seriously doubts that a program of individual farm ownership, however comprehensive, will permanently eliminate the evils of the tenancy system, particularly as they exist in the southern cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar areas. The position taken by leading sharecropper and tenant organizations clearly indicates the road that must be traveled. Recently the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union submitted a statement to the Governor's Farm Tenancy Commission in Arkansas which, after pointing out the inadequacies of farming on small isolated tracts, went on to say that: "If the prospective new farm owners are to make something more than a mere subsistence living, and if the cultural level of the people is to be raised, a new type of farm organization will be necessary. That organization must perforce be a communal or village farm economy, based on the idea of cooperation and mutual assistance. The large plantation has an economic justification which we neglect at our peril. Particularly where there is a century old tradition of plantation collectivism. Many students of this trend toward large-scale production in agriculture believe that the fundamental readjustment which is needed is in the character of the ownership of the large farm. To some groups the sensible way out is group ownership of land. Some of the projects of the Resettlement Administration embody cooperative features, extending at least to joint ownership of tools and equipment." In fact, the Resettlement Administration may be partly responsible for introducing this new approach to the problem.

And, I may say, Mr. Chairman, under my interpretation, our interpretation of the bill as it is now phrased on that question of

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