378

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
Mr. AsweLL. Say 8,000,000 bales. Would you include the weight
of the bales in the debenture, if only three bales?

Mr. Stewart. That is a new problem. I would be glad to study
it. I have not any answer offhand to give you on that.

Mr. Aswern. All right. |

Mr. Stewart. With respect to the matter Mr. Ketcham has men-
tioned, that of preventing over-stimulation of production of deben-
turable quantities, I may say that here again is a place where 1t would
be difficult to be dogmatic. I am going to give you my personal plat-
form on this. I think that there are some commodities with respect
to which any fears that you have with respect to 10 cents or 20
cents having any effect on increasing acreage are rather beside the
point. Take the case of corn, for example. The acreage 1n corn dur-
ing the 5-year period from 1921 to 1926, stood at 100,000,000 or
101,000,000, a year-to-year variation at its widest mark of only 1.4
per cent.

Mr. KincreLoe. What is that production; corn?

Mr. Stewart. That is the acreage given by the Department of
Agriculture on corn; that is not production. The production varied
more widely. The thing I am trying to emphasize is that there are
some products in our American export agriculture, the acreage of
which is pretty firmly fixed—so firmly fixed that a 10 or 20-cent
bounty would not be likely to disturb it. That is not so true of
wheat.

Mr, Kixcueror. Still, corn, don’t you think, had a whole lot to do
with that cost of wheat?

Mr. Stewart. In the case of corn you have practical stability of
acreage.

Mr, Kixcugroe. I come from a corn country, and there are hun-
dreds of acres of fertile land in that country capable of growing corn
in which there has never been a plow stuck for that purpose.

Mr. Stewart. Very true. But what I am trying to say is that the
variations in price which have been experienced in respect of corn in
the past few years have resulted in variations in acreage much smaller
than the ordinary eastern imagination pictures. :

Mr. Hore. What have those variations been in price during that
period ¢

Mr. Stewart. Those figures could be placed in the record from
the Department of Agriculture year book.

— Hore. I wondered, practically, whether they were great or
all.

Mr. Stewart. They are there for vou to look at [handing the book
to Mr. Hope].

Mr. Hope. There have been considerable fluctuations?

hy Soni There have been in price but not in acres.

~ Mr. Hope. Which ought to affect the acreage if it was possible to
increase acreage.

hou: BINCHELOE. But you have to carry in mind that the price of

og le has a whole lot to do with the fluctuation of the

price of corn, too.

i BRT Very true. In the case of wheat we had between

i) 9 a jump in acreage from 59,000,000 to 76,000,000 in one

year, not easily traceable to difference in price, because the price dif-

erence was not marked: but the acreace difference did divulege——