AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
379 
Mr. KincaeLoe. Was that the reason the Government during the 
war told them to plant wheat and more wheat? 
Mr. Stewart. But there was a larger acreage in 1919 than in 
1918 by 16,000,000, which I believe is about 28 per cent. I say that 
merely to point out that we ought to become rather skeptical about 
some of the claims as to the danger of acreage expansion. It is not 
so true of some commodities as it is of other commodities. But, pass- 
ing that point and granting the worst fears of those who seem to be 
seeing ghosts in the matter—granting that those worst fears are 
true, it seems to me it is a logical thing to include in a measure of 
this kind a definite and drastic basis for withdrawing the debenture 
in case there is a marked increase in acreage; and I think about three 
methods could be properly proposed to govern that. I have one 
with me this morning. 
Mr. McSweeNEY. In my home town there is a brush factory, and 
they tried to speed up production by increasing the rates for piece- 
work in that factory, and they found that those men, whenever they 
had increased their wages, as soon as they had earned the regular 
amount they used to earn per week, they would knock off that many 
days and not produce any more. Is that true in growing crops, that 
if the price went up there would be a tendency to cut down? 
Mr. Stewart. I think it is true that, when the price goes down in 
agricultural commodities, there is not always a tendency to cut off 
production. In other words, there are stabilizing factors all through 
our economic life. But, assuming that the worst fears of those who 
fear the improbable should be the basis for the preventive measures, 
it has seemed to me that you should in the first place consider two 
or three ways of getting at the problem. One is the basis of expor- 
tation. If we should find that exportation of any debenturable com- 
modity has increased 10 per cent, then there should be an automatic 
cut in the rate of debenture. The rate should be cut drastically 
enough that it would cease to enable any one commodity to run 
away with the benefits that are available under this system. That 
's one basis—the exportation basis—the basis of actual export. 
On the other hand, suppose that you should consider the acreage 
basis. Of course, you could not apply that to livestock. You would 
have to use, in lieu of acreage, in the case of livestock, some sort of a 
production criterion. But if you wanted to use acreage, you would 
require a different scale by which you would cut down. and I have 
suggested here a scale. For a computed increase in production of 
acreage of less than 5 per cent, no reduction in rates of debenture; 
for an increase of between 5 and 15 per cent, a reduction of one- 
fourth in the rate of debenture; for a computed increase of 15 per 
cent to 25 per cent, reduction to one-half; in the case of an increase of 
from 25 to 50 per cent, reduction by three-fourths; and in case the 
production was in excess of 50 per cent, the complete withdrawal of 
the debenture, or at least 99 per cent of it. That is a suggestion. 
In connection with this point I would emphasize that such a change 
in acreage should be computed on a sufficiently broad basis that the 
farmer could see what he was in for if he persisted in increasing 
acreage. Suppose that you should say that, if during the past two 
years the farmers had increased their acreage of any one of these 
debenturable commodities by 20 per cent. then there would be this