380° 
AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
indicated reduction in the rate of debenture, that is, a 20 per cent 1n- 
crease in those two vears compared with the preceding five-year 
basis. 
One year passes. The board reports that there was an increase of 
20 per cent. The warning goes out to the farmers of the country, 
« You overincreased last year, and if you do that again this year, or 
if you don’t make an adjustment in your acreage this year to a much 
lower basis, the average for the two years will be such that you have 
no debenture year after next. 
That is a suggestion. It is not perfect by any means. 
But, again, there is a suggestion which has come to me indirectly 
this morning. This method might resemble the basis used in a tariff 
law about a hundred years ago, whereby the amount was reduced 
annually by a certain proportion of the tariff. It was to take 10 
years, 1 bélieve, to cut the tariff down to about half, or something like 
that, to its original figures. 
Mr. PurneLL. Is it not true, as a general proposition, that lower 
price levels are followed by corresponding increased acreage, and 
that higher price levels carry with them a lower acreage? That has 
been suggested by a number of witnesses who have appeared before 
the committee. 
Mr. Jones. Just the reverse. 
Mr. Pur~err. In my opinion it is the reverse, but the question has 
been that the lower price levels carry with them the increased acre- 
age and representing an effort to get in more money regardless of net 
profit involved. 
Mr, Stewart. There is a great deal of force in that contention as 
stated. 
Mr. Kincueroe. I think that is true. 
Mr. Stewart. It depends upon whether we are concerned with 
marginal land or with other land. 
Mr. Kincaeror. I am talking about the land in America. Has 
that been your experience as an economist that the lower the price 
the greater the amount of the commodities raised ? 
Mr. Stewart. Take the case of wheat. Our wheat acreage has been 
cut down to a little more than 50,000,000 acres as compared with the 
76,000,000 acres which we had in 1919. 
Mr. Jones. But, Doctor, there was a special appeal to the patriot- 
ism of farmers during that time to produce wheat needed by the 
whole world. I know in 1917 and 1918 there was; and, of course, 
the farmers had gotten their machinery and they had gotten their 
facilities and were all arranged for larger production. 
Mr. Stewart. There was a hang over there. 
Mr. JoNEs. Do you not think, generally speaking, high prices stim- 
alate production and lower prices retard production? 
fr Smmane, I should say that was the tendency. The only thing 
his matter of agricultural acreage is that you can increase 1t more 
easily than you can decrease it, speaking in totals. So far as indi- 
ronal crops are Wig it is possible to get out of line with other 
ENC mers will try to get out of sinking ships. But so far as 
keep ois Lage 1s ohuenerd, hard times may cause the farmers to 
whieh hor an working rather than to neglect it. Take the case in 
gh taxes are runnine and the farmer has some land which