Mr. GRAHAM. I heard that statement. Was that in the argument on appropriations of Agriculture Department in the House hearings? It usually is. If it is not, it is in the Senate. Senator Webster brings this out. There are some that are extremely large.

One qualification on that. One of the larger ones that I know is a land-management firm that gets all of the money for a number of farms and then distributes it out, so this is a little-it is not quite what it seems sometimes. The Northern Illinois Bank & Trust Co., I think it is, although don't pin me down on the name, manages about 100 farms. They get all of this payment for all of the programs for all of these farmers that go to this one company as manager. It looks like they are making an awful lot more money than they are. There are some that are extremely large and that are getting payments that are pretty unconscionable.

Mr. GOODLING. Our present farms are receiving subsidies, you agree with that?

Mr. GRAHAM. What?

Mr. GOODLING. There are present farms receiving farm subsidies? Mr. GRAHAM. There are some of those.

Mr. GOODLING. Do you agree with that concept of farm subsidy? Mr. GRAHAM. It is according to what your program is. In the voluntary programs to limit the size of the subsidy would probably kill it off, kill off the voluntary programs. If they are mandatory programs voted in, I think we would probably limit these.

Incidentally, most of these are mandatory programs.

Mr. GOODLING. We are not helping rural America by subsidizing prison farms or company farms.

Mr. GRAHAM. That is right.

Mr. GOODLING. I am interested in rural America. What can we do about it?

Mr. GRAHAM. I think there are some things that could be done in prison farms. I am not an expert on prison farms. In terms of the company, or the corporation, giant corporation, on most of the family corporations we need to be careful with an increase in the number of them for business reasons. When we talk about the giants of the corporations, I think we could do some things better in terms of our tax legislation. We have closed some tax loopholes that could really slow up some of these excessive payments. We could equalize it in terms of some of our taxes.

Another think that has happened that is going to be an equalizing factor has been the extending of minimum wage to agriculture. This is doing a little in terms of the giant farms. There were three of the larger dairies in one of our Eastern States not very far from here that went out of business immediately after the wage-and-hour laws applied to them. In other words, their efficiency was not efficiency. It was exploitation. When they had to pay the same prices that anybody paid they were no longer as efficient as they thought they were. Some of that efficiency has not been truly efficiency in its proper terms.

We are going to get some equalization on that. On the giant farm that becomes unionized we are going to find union wages are the equalizer, I think. This is going to stop some of this in its tracks. The reason these giant farms got so big is because of the things you are

talking about. They made money for these people due to a reorganization of various things. Stocks went up $18 one day on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Union Pacific Railroad still owns 220,000 acres of the original patent grants in the Central Valley of California.

Mr. GOODLING. What would the minimum wage do to rural America? I am thinking of the family farm.

Mr. GRAHAM. For the family farm, I do not think they would do a thing, because they furnish most of their help. It is within the family. The cheap labor that sets the wages for the family farmer is the fellow that gets hurt as a result of it. One of our State masters has a poultry and egg operation. There is a fellow that hires some part-time pinchhitters to pick up eggs. That is 50 cents an hour and this 50 cents becomes my wages, too. This is one of the things that hurts us. If this fellow has to start paying $1.25 an hour, the wages of the family farmer is going to come up with that, too. It is the cheap wages that has pulled all of our income down. Minimum wages are basically helpful to the family farmer. He is not going to hire much help. There is enough exemption though. If he is not very big he could be in a pretty good situation and not get hurt on the minimum wage. If he is hiring consistently 100 people all the time, then he is going to be under the minimum wages and probably unionized before too long. This happened in the grape industry in California now.

Mr. GOODLING. Thank you.

Mr. RESNICK. Congressman Zwach.

Mr. ZWACH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I would like to commend Mr. Graham because I have been listening here in Washington for some farm wisdom and he has considerable and length and depth and height and breadth, which I think should be commended. I think that you broadly implied that underpayment of the rural areas over the years is part of our problem.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. ZWACH. I agree fully with that assessment.

I notice also that you support some strength in the marketplace for rural people. I notice that you support S. 109. Would you care to comment a little further on this area.

Mr. GRAHAM. The thing that discourages me, Congressman, is that I think there are practical limits to which we can go any longer in terms of strengthening the marketplace. We waited too long. We are too few any more. I think that one of the places where the chips were down in 1965 was in the farm bill.

The chairman will remember the argument on certificate payments for wheat. Whether we could add one cent a loaf to a loaf of bread to give the farmer parity for that part of the wheat that went into bread. We lost that one. Just that one single loaf. We lost that one which meant politically that the Congress decided it was more politically expedient to take it out of the general fund.

Frankly, I have my doubts that we can bargain our way to equality of income today any longer without running into consumer and political resistance that just is going to beat our heads in. I said this in our paper, the first issue of the paper, and I got some glory hallelujah for it. It is not what I believe ought to be done. I was predicting what I

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thought would be done. I think that we are going to depend, after we get to a certain level, from there on to a parity level and equality of income level, whatever kind of a level they are going to set up here. from there on considerable of this is going to come from the general

fund. I do not like it.

I don't like it. We fought that all the way. I think we have taken our lumps on that one. I don't think we have the votes to do it any more. That is why we said in our Senate testimony in S.109, this is only a partial answer and I think it is a partial answer. We still have to have a package. There is no single one on income that is going to work either.

I think we have to do everything we can.

Mr. RESNICK. Going back to 1965, we worked for a marketing order. It was opposed by the Republicans almost to a man. Today you see the fruits of it. You see eggs selling for 10 cents a dozen under the cost of production. We are not talking about profit now, we are talking about the cost of production.

We are not talking about the farmer with 2,000 or 3,000 hens. The other day, not in my district, but right near it, a man with 88,000 layers went into bankruptcy. The bank took over his flock, and they don't know what to do with it. The point is that even the large units, the technologically equipped people, are going out of business. We are either going to have regulations over the supply and demand or we are going to have fewer and fewer farmers.

Mr. GRAHAM. I think the chicken business has ceased to be a farmer operation generally.

Mr. RESNICK. It is very interesting that the poultry industry has the lowest return in terms of percentage of parity than any other portion of the farm business. I think broilers are down to 50 percent or something like that.

Mr. GRAHAM. They have been running between 50 and 60.

To answer Mr. Zwach's question just a little further, during the war period we were going up in our income exactly the same as the rest of the economy and then farming tailed off and the rest of the economy went up.

Three years ago, we had lost in equity $235 billion in 10 years, from the decline of farm prices under this general upturn of the rest of the prices.

Now, how much different would our whole economy have been if we had that $235 billion out there. It is an interesting thing to me--and I think the American public ought to watch this one and learn a lesson from it-that we did not get an economic takeoff in America until we began to get another improvement in farm income and that when farm income sloughed off last year we began to get a recession again. Now, these two are tied so closely together historically there is just no way of separating them. This is the biggest single market.

The family farm is the biggest single market for American industrial products there is. We buy more than all we export. Our total export business isn't as much as this business out here from the farmer who wants to buy the new tractor who can't afford it. You give him money and he will spend it for machinery, hard capital goods made out of steel.

Mr. ZWACH. You will note that Mr. Carl Wilkin is listed on here to testify and I believe he is an expert in this area of lack of adequate farm income, and what it has done nationwide.

Mr. GRAHAM. I am interested in his testimony and I want a copy of it, but I probably ought to go and see what they are going to do about the International Wheat Agreement. What they are going to do probably won't make any difference whether I am there or not, but I would like to go.

I am sorry to have taken so much time. I apologize to the committee and to the witness who follows me.

Mr. RESNICK. At this time we will hear from Alan Gartner, executive director, Economic Opportunity Council of Suffolk.

STATEMENT OF ALAN GARTNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL OF SUFFOLK (N.Y.) INC.

Mr. GARTNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee. You have a copy of the prepared testimony which I offer to be filed for the record.

Mr. RESNICK. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The prepared statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF ALAN GARTNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL OF SUFFOLK (N.Y.) INC.

It is an honor to appear before you today. The concern of this committee and of its distinguished chairman, our fellow New Yorker, for the development of rural America is one which we deeply share.

One generally does not think of New York State and Suffolk County in discussing rural America. However, I would like to point out that Suffolk County is the largest agricultural county in New York State and that its production of potatoes, other fresh vegetables, and poultry makes it a major agricultural area producing over $70,023,000 annually in farm products.

Pride in the productivity of our land must, however, be turned to shame in recognition of the fact that too much of this wealth is made possible by the ill-paid farm worker. More than 4,000 of our county's residents work in agriculture and a like number of "migrants" join this work force each year, primarily to process potatoes. The word "migrant," and a peculiar Suffolk County linguistic aberration, "settled migrant," are in truth misnomers in that the "season" is more than six months long and, indeed many whom our community brand as "former migrants" have lived in the county for years if not decades. Our fellow anti-poverty program, the Seasonal Employees in Agriculture, Inc., has found from a survey based upon statements of earnings from the Social Security Administration that for a four year period, 1960-1964, 54 migrants earned an average of $639.95 annual income. And this poverty is made all the more shameful by the fact of the complicity of state and federal agencies, most notably the Employment Service, in the establishment, nurture and perpetuation of this system.

Not only is Suffolk County-which occupies the eastern two-thirds of Long Island-the most productive agricultural county in New York state, it is also the fastest growing county in the State. From a 1950 population of approximately 300,000, the 1960 census showed a population in excess of 600,000, and present estimates indicate a population of just short of 1,000,000. Without comprehensive planning we are faced with our entire county being overcome with urban sprawl, our water table polluted by detergents and household wastes, and our sea-coast raped of its wetlands by dredging and filling.

The mixed rural and urban nature of our county, the western part of which is at the fringe of the New York City commuting area, presents a situation not untypical in gross order, we believe, of other parts of America. Not exclusively rural but with half our county having a population density of under .5 persons

per acre, not solely agricultural but producing more than $70 million of food products annually, not devastatingly poor but with some 100,000 people living in poverty-the majority of whom are white and living outside of heavy "pockets of poverty," Suffolk County is a picture of the problems, and hopes, which confront much of America.

While there are many problems which face rural America, I will comment most specifically upon those which concern the rural poor. Not only would it be presumptuous for me to venture into the broader field of rural life (especially before so knowledgable a forum as this), but also because poverty is so great a part of the problem of rural America. For example:

43% of the nation's poverty is rural, but only 29% of its population.

The unemployment rate of rural non-farm residents is 20% higher than for urban residents, and I am sure that the under-employment rate is even higher.

44% of the nation's sub-standard housing is in rural areas, but only 30% of the housing stock is there.

For Suffolk County there is a similar disproportion between the county as a whole where, according to the 1960 census, 11% of the total families had incomes under $3,000. per year, while 14% of the rural families had below poverty incomes, and a shocking 24% of the rural farm families had below $3,000. a year incomes.

For all of America, and especially its rural poor, a basic and essential step is to establish federal minimum standards for public assistance. Simple humanity demands that this country, the wealthiest the world has ever known, make the commitment to itself and to all of its people, that hunger-indeed starvation, be banished. Recent studies have, hopefully, banished the old canard of the welfare person being a malingerer or "cheat." Over 95% of those on "welfare" are either the old, the infirm, children, or those with child-rearing responsibilities. Were we to lift them out of poverty, we would have served justice and sharpened the problem of combatting poverty. For rural America, where welfare payments are the lowest-averaging less than half of the "poverty line" in many states, such a step would serve to reduce the great pressure for migration to our already over-crowded and often ill-equipped urban areas.

Of similar power would be an end to the outmoded exclusion of farm workers from the benefits of Fair Labor Standards and minimum wage regulations. We urge an across the board federal minimum wage and an equally comprehensive application of fair labor standards including a forty hour, five day work week, time and a half pay for overtime, and health and safety standards protective of workers' well-being. We cannot tolerate a food production system which feeds the affluent at the expense of the underpaid farm worker.

Our history books while recording the great international migrations of the turn of the century, often fail to describe our own intranational migration from rural to urban areas, from farm to town. This migration is not merely one of "history" but of the present. For example, between 1940 and 1965 some 25 million people (in terms of change of residence and not migration) left agriculture. I would like to place special emphasis upon four areas essential to rural development: housing, employment, social services, and coordination of public programs.

As noted above, 44% of the sub-standard housing in this country is in rural areas. Nonetheless, since 1950, the federal government has built more than 36 houses in the cities and their suburbs for each 1 built with the assistance of the Farmers House Administration in rural communities. Furthermore, few of these houses built in rural areas have been for the rural poor.

The need for housing in rural areas is not merely one to provide adequate shelter for a family but it is intimately connected with employment. For we have what the director of our new Self-Help Housing program has called a "circular absurdity" for the rural poor where housing and poorly paid farm work are provided by the employer/landlord and, thus, to improve their housing, they must find other employment, but to find other employment is to lose their shelter.

Steps can and must be taken to rectify this shocking imbalance:

A firm agency commitment by the Farmers Home Administration to serve the housing needs of the truly poor. And this commitment backed up by congressional action to provide funds for low-interest mortgages.