farm home, and in doing that we should establish a low rate of interest with a long time amortization period that will give some assurance that he will not lose the farm by foreclosure; also we should exempt a reasonable amount of delinquencies and judgments in case of unfortunate conditions that may arise, drought, and so forth.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOOD. Yes.

Mr. ANDRESEN. How would you take care of the thousands of farmers who lost their farms by foreclosure?

Mr. WOOD. Well, my bill provides that any farmer who lost his home by foreclosure would be covered.

Mr. ÅNDRESEN. The restriction that you have on farm ownership on January 1, 1937, would not apply to those who have lost their land through the processes of foreclosure?

Mr. WOOD. Since 1937. Not the land that was in process of foreclosure. Of course, if it is in the process-that was not intended as an arbitrary figure at all. I had to set some figure as a beginning. But my purpose, originally, was to assist the tenant farmer to acquire a farm and to enable him to take care of the farm over longtime payments. We have had a 4-year depression; that was the thing that was uppermost in my mind. There was not any intention on my part to shut out any man who has a farm now and who is going through the process of foreclosure. The farmer who has gone through the process of foreclosure would be entitled to the benefits of this law.

Mr. ANDRESEN. How would the selection be made? Should you pick the good tenants at the start and put them on this Government land?

Mr. WOOD. Yes; my bill provides that the tenant must have exercised reasonable diligence and that he must continue to exercise reasonable diligence.

Mr. ANDRESEN. That might take care of the tenants in Missouri, but when get further south they claim that there is a different condition down there.

Mr. WOOD. That is just the main reason why I do not desire to put all of the details of the administration of the law into a bill. We have a Federal agency now set up under the Agricultural Administration that can handle all of these multitudinous details, particularly matters that could be taken care of through experience.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Are you satisfied with the administration of the Resettlement Administration in their conduct of this business?

Mr. WOOD. I think that the Resettlement Administration has made a fine beginning. It is a noble effort. It is not a solution, but it is a fine beginning, to say the least. It is the first time that any real substantial effort has ever been made to assist not only the tenant farmers, but the destitute farmers.

I have just recently looked at the project out here at Green Belt. I think it is a Resettlement Administration project, about which so much has been said by the opponents of the administration, and it is my opinion that when Green Belt is completed it is going to be a very successful project. I think there are thousands of people working in Washington who would be very glad to occupy one of

those apartments out there at the reasonable rental it will probably be, and I think it is a very fine thing. Of course, that has nothing to do with this farm-tenant situation.

Mr. ANDRESEN. But, the complaint here-and it is not from the opponents of the administration-is the fact that the Resettlement Administration is putting so much money in these different homesteads.

Mr. WOOD. Yes; I know a good deal of that is said on the floor of the House, and I have read a good deal about it in the papers. I have heard much propaganda and seen much propaganda in the daily press about the millions of dollars of money that has been wasted in all of these projects. I have heard that said about all set-ups of the Roosevelt administration. I have heard it about the . P. W. A.; I have heard it about the W. P. A.; I have heard it about the R. F. C. Of course, the R. F. C. has been lauded more by everybody than any other new set-up, and I suppose the reason why they do not say much about the operation of it, the administration of it, is because it was originally set up under the Hoover administration; but it was put into operation and really made to do things that it was originally intended to do under this administration.

But that does not have anything to do with this bill.

The CHAIRMAN. No. If we go into all of those things and try to settle them, we will be here until the snow flies. I desire to thank the gentleman. You have finished your statement?

Mr. WOOD. Yes; I have about finished my statement, Mr. Chair

man.

I just want to tell the committee that I am mighty proud that the administration has really decided to approach this matter in a serious manner, and I hope and believe that substantial legislation will be passed before the session of this Congress closes. I hope it will. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lucas, do you want to appear before the committee?

Mr. LUCAS. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I believe there is no one else except Mr. Thatcher, who is a member of the President's Commission. We will be glad to hear from you, Mr. Thatcher. Will you give the reporter your fuli name?

STATEMENT OF M. W. THATCHER, REPRESENTING THE FARMERS' UNION AND THE FARMERS' NATIONAL GRAIN CORPORATION

Mr. THATCHER. My name is M. W. Thatcher.

Mr. COOLEY. Would it be all right, Mr. Chairman, for Mr. Thatcher to put in the names of the other members of the Committee?

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a list of the Committee?

Mr. THATCHER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you hand that list to the reporter to be incorporated in the hearings?

Mr. THATCHER. Yes, sir.

(The list referred to is as follows:)

The membership of the President's Committee on Farm Tenancy was as follows:

Henry A. Wallace, chairman, Secretary of Agriculture.

L. C. Gray, executive secretary, Assistant Administrator, Resettlement Administration.

W. W. Alexander, executive director, Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Mrs. Fred S. Bennett, vice president, Council of Women for Home Missions, 100 East Palisade Avenue, Englewood, N. J.

Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, care of National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C.

A. G. Black, Chief, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Department of Agriculture.

W. L. Blackstone, representative, Southern Tenant Farmers Union, Wynne, Ark.

Carl Bailey, Governor-elect, Little Rock, Ark.

Mrs. Curtis Bok, Jr., Gulph Mill, Rosemont, Pa.

Louis Brownlow, director, Public Administration Clearing House, Chicago, Ill.

Mark Ethridge, publisher, the Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.
Lee M. Gentry, manager, Sinissippi Farms, Oregon, Ill.

Fred Hawley, Laurens, Iowa.

Charles S. Johnson, professor of sociology, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Mrs. Una Roberts Lawrence, missionary study editor, Home Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Kansas City, Mo.

Murray D. Lincoln, secretary, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, Columbus, Ohio.

A. R. Mann, provost, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.

A. G. Pat Mayse, publisher, Paris News, Paris, Tex.

Edward F. McGrady, Assistant Secretary, Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

W. H. Brokaw, director, agricultural extension service, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebr.

Xenophon Caverno, farmer, Canalou, Mo.

James Chappell, editor, the Birmingham News-Age-Herald, Birmingham, Ala.

Edwin R. Embree, president, Julius Rosenwald Foundation, Chicago, Ill. Howard W. Odum, director, Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, Raleigh, N. C.

Ill.

Edward A. O'Neal, president, American Farm Bureau Federation, Chicago, F. D. Patterson, president, Agricultural School of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.

Dr. John A. Ryan, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, D. C. Paul C. Smith, executive editor, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, Calif.

Louis J. Taber, master, National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, Columbus, Ohio.

R. G. Tugwell, formerly Administrator, Resettlement Administration.
W. I. Myers, Governor, Farm Credit Administration, Washington, D. C.
Lowry Nelson, director, Utah Experiment Station, Logan, Utah.

Mrs. W. A. Newell, superintendent, Christian social relations, Women's missionary council, Methodist Episcopal Church, Salisbury, N. C.

Fred Wallace, farmer, Kearney, Nebr.

W. W. Waymack, associate editor, Des Moines Register and Tribune, Des Moines, Iowa.

M. L. Wilson, Under Secretary, Department of Agriculture.

Clarence Poe, editor, the Progressive Farmer and Southern Ruralist, Raleigh, N. C.

Clarence Roberts, editor, Oklahoma Farmer and Stockman, Oklahoma City, Okla.

Miss Ruth Suckow (Mrs. Ferner Nuhn), Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Henry C. Taylor, director, Farm Foundation, Chicago, Ill.

M. W. Thatcher, legislative representative, Farmers Union, 423 East Leland Street, Chevy Chase, Md.

Mr. ANDRESEN. May I ask, Mr. Thatcher, a question, in the beginning, as to whether all members of the committee were unanimous on this report?

Mr. THATCHER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: In answer to the question of Congressman Andresen, I would say that the technical committee, which is a part of the whole committee, which drafted, I would say, 90 percent of the report that the President sent over, were in agreement; but that when the whole committee was called together again, about a week or two ago, some 30 members of them made some minor changes and one major change. The major change being the time which the contract should run before deed was given to the buyer.

The technical committee had provided a period of 40 years. It was finally agreed by the whole committee to write that in as 20 years. I think that was the major change.

Mr. ANDRESEN. I notice that the Farm Bureau dissents; is that the reason for their defense of the report?

Mr. THATCHER. I have not read their dissents, and I presume their reason for dissenting is those matters about which they dissent.

The CHAIRMAN. It is stated in the conclusion that that is one of the two reasons.

Mr. ANDRESEN. I was wondering if that was the only reason they had.

Mr. THATCHER. I have not had time to read it. I do not know what it contained. I think there are three or four members of the whole committee who dissented on one or more matters and they filed those reports, but I have not seen them.

The CHAIRMAN. I think that it is remarkable that that large a committee was so nearly unanimous.

Mr. THATCHER. Mr. Chairman, I was just about to make that observation. I have never sat in a committee where I thought that there was more care given to a subject and more tolerance or as much as that. It was a real effort on the part of everybody to try to get at the causes of the problem.

I was not an expert on those matters before the committee met, and I am not an expert on them after they met. I do not want to profess to be one. I had never given any great deal of study to the matter of tenancy and its causes except in a very general way until that time and it certainly was a course of education to hear all that was offered in connection with the matter.

My appearance here, of course, is in support of the report, but there are just two or three things I should like to touch upon if I may. One is the administration of any program that is set up. I am very anxious that the Farm Credit Administration be preserved. and kept apart and distinct as an agricultural banking institution. I do not want anything that savors of social credit or an aspect of social credit to be in any way connected with it.

I think the Farm Credit Administration is one of the most credible Federal functions that has come to my notice.

I think that all other aid in the form of credit and so forth that may be given to farmers, who do not qualify within the qualifications required by the Farm Credit Administration, there should be the line of demarcation for people in the agricultural group to go to the other credit administration.

I think it is unfortunate that we have not recognized the need of such a new credit and administration for agriculture before, and I think it has been a very serious mistake in connection with the functions of the Farm Credit Administration, and those assumed by the Resettlement Administration, that we have not recognized a very unhappy situation in agricultural credit that exists because there has not been a definite line of demarcation between banking credit and that credit which at least has a social aspect to it as we find it in the Resettlement Administration.

Addressing my remarks particularly to that phase of assistance given to farmers that is known as rehabilitation; when farmers needing credit assistance fall through the sieve of the Farm Credit Administration, fall just below the qualifications for credit, or cannot quite meet the minimum of the requirements for credit, I think it is an uneconomic program that by silence says we can give you no rehabilitation or any assistance until you float down in flux, until you get down here [indicating] where you are about demolished, and when you meet this lowest standard of qualifications of destitution, then we may come in and help you rise up again and try to push you up this so-called agricultural ladder and push you through that seive which is the bottom of the Farm Credit Administration and thus push you back into the agricultural bank.

It seems to me a matter of national economy suggests that we have a definite line of demarcation between agricultural banking credit and the supplemental credit that has the aspect of social help, and that we pick this man up at the point where he needs the least loose credit assistance, rehabilitate him at his first illness and his first wound rather than let him just fall and fall and fall, until he can prove that he has fallen so far that he qualifies for assistance from the Resettlement Administration.

I think that is bad national economy.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that the Resettlement Administration should go all of the way down from the very top, and that those who cannot quite qualify for the minimum requirements should have access to provisions for rehabilitation loans?

Mr. THATCHER. I do; with this qualification: I think if the farmer cannot get back through or he has fallen through the seive that there ought to be definite rules and standards for making an appraisement of his total situation and potential possibilties and he either should be discarded from the agricultural family or right there rehabilitated, one of the two.

I do not mean to say that everybody who has some equity or who cannot quite reach credit or has fallen through, that that necessarily qualifies him. I think that there should be a total appraisement and consequent consideration of all aspects which go to make a farmer and potential farmer.

I think that should be appraised and he should be detected away up there [indicating] rather than receive assistance away down here, because away down here there is some limit as to what we can do for him, and he falls usually in the class of rehabilitation or relief and we have at the present time 420,000 on relief.

Mr. DOXEY. Mr. Thatcher, right there, have you any figures as to the number of persons that have fallen through this sieve; that is, just below the Farm Credit Administration, in the lower strata?

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