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AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
the effect of changing the base, shifting the base on this thing,
chaneing the acreage. Here is what we got.

It ic very difficult I know from my own experience to follow figures
when they are read, and I won’t read all of them, but I will put this
in the record, but take 1914, that was one of the largest, if not the
largest year we have ever had since accurate data have been kept
by the Department of Agriculture.

"The American cotton crop actually harvested that year irom
36,832,000 acres was 15,900,000 bales, or 209 lint pounds per acre.
The low vear of that series was 1921. In that year, 30,509,000
acres produced 7,977,778 bales of cotton, which was an average of
12414 pounds of lint per acre.

What would have happened—we will simply figure on the proposi-
tion of how you are going to control this thing—what would have
happened, taking the acreage of 1926, the last year actually harvested?
We had in that year 48,898,000 acres in cotton. If we had had a
year like 1914 in which year we made 209 pounds of lint cotton per
acre, the production would have been 20,439,000 bales of cotton.
As a matter of fact, it was 17,500,000 bales. It would have been
20,439,000 bales on the same acreage, and not on any hypothetical
proposition, but on the application of the figure actually realized in
the year 1914.

On the other hand, considering the matter of controlling this

surplus, still supposing we had a year like 1921, and you made 12414
pounds of lint cotton per acre, what would you have had? You
have produced a crop on the last year’s acreage of 12,175,000 bales.
In other words, between your maximum and your minimum actually
produced during this series, actually realized and not assumed, not
cuessed at, there was a difference of 8,264,000 bales of cotton. Just
think of the significance of it. And those of you who know something
about cotton—that is, are concerned with it, and dependent on it, and
all those interested in the question of creating a surplus—you have
heard what the farmer ought to do to protect himself, and you should
get the significance of the fact that on the same acreage the differences
in yield meant a difference of 8,264,000 bales of cotton, and that was
286,222 bales more than the entire cotton crop of 1921,
_ Mr. Kercuam. Right there, will you be kind enough to take the
figures you have given with reference to your last year, and put that
over against the high yield in 1914, to see what the two extremes
would be?

Mr. Stone. What you would have produced in 1914, instead of
15,905,840 bales of cotton, which you did produce on 36,832,000
acres, instead of 15,900,000 you would have produced 9,971.000 bales.
9 difference in that year of 6,224,000 bales.

Mr. Kercram. That was due to conditions utterly beyond the con-
trol of the farmer?

9 Mr. STONE. Every one of them. There isn’t one single element in

220 that the farmer even influenced, much less controlled. He
ou dn’t even influence it. In other words, all of the work that has
ron done by. the Department of Agriculture—I say all of it, the
CE u «of 1t—the hundreds of millions that we have spent, have
” whet with tendency to produce a surplus. In other words, that
OI. as we are all trying to do, make as much cotton and wheat and