Press Conference

THE PRESIDENT: Quite a mob today.

Q. It must be the spring weather. They expect a good farm story.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't believe they will get any farm story. Haven't got to it yet.

MR. DONALDSON: All in.

THE PRESIDENT: What is the news?

Q. That is what we want to know.

Q. Anything about gold, so that we can know what we are writing about?

THE PRESIDENT: No. Didn't Jesse Jones talk to you yesterday?

Q. He told us he knew nothing about it yesterday.

Q. And we believe him. (Laughter)

Q. He said that you were the only man who knew. (Laughter)

THE PRESIDENT: Then I guess nobody does.

Q. He said you did.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know anything about it. . . . (Laughter)

Q. Can you tell us something about your attitude toward the price-fixing proposals talked about in the last few days?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know exactly what you mean by "price-fixing proposals." Perhaps I can talk to you for just a minute off the record again so that I can give you some idea of the results of our program in agriculture.

Well, let's start, say, in the South, where a year ago the cotton growers got around 4 1/2, 5, 5 1/2 cents for their cotton. This year they made a pretty good crop, even after they had plowed a portion of it under; and, of course, they did get paid for that portion they did plow under. So, from the cash point of view, they are very distinctly better off this year. They got nine or ten cents for cotton where, last year, they got not much over half that amount.

So, while we don't think that cotton is high enough yet on a parity basis, we think it is a pretty good job for a year. Undoubtedly the purchasing power in the South has tremendously increased. That is illustrated by the remark that General Wood of Sears Roebuck made to me the other day. The reason I keep this off the record is that I don't want any of these people whom I quote approached. Sears Roebuck sales in the country dropped off about this time last year; but Sears Roebuck sales in the South this year have gone up considerably, showing a very definite increase in purchasing power on the part of the agricultural communities—and the South is, of course, primarily agricultural. For instance, in the State of Georgia, Sears showed an increase of 120 percent over the corresponding month of 1932. That is just an illustration to us that we are coming along in a satisfactory way this year, although we hope that next year we shall get a higher price than 10 cents for cotton. That, however, we cannot talk abut because it is next year; we don't know what the economic conditions will be.

Then, Number 2, the tobacco-growing part of the country. There, because of the agreement we entered into, the tobacco farmers are getting 17 cents, I think it is, for their tobacco. Their purchasing power has gone up relatively even more than that of the cotton farmers. Ninety-seven percent of them have signed up on acreage reduction for next year; and the five big tobacco companies that do the buying of the tobacco have guaranteed a price of 17 cents for the average of this tobacco for the balance of this crop, which means about three-quarters of the crop which has not been sold. That is a very large increase in the actual price to the tobacco farmer, so he is getting along pretty well this year.

Then you come down to certain other sections. Take, for instance, cattle. Cattle are very bad. Cattle, of course, were not included in the A.A.A. They were left out at the suggestion of the members of the Congress from the cattle country; and we have been able to do practically nothing in regard to cattle. They are very nearly at the low point; and it is a serious thing.

Take the case of wheat. Taking it by and large through the wheat belt, the farmer is getting pretty nearly twice what he got last year for his wheat. But he has had a very, very short crop; and if, as in many cases, he only has had half as much wheat to sell off his farm as he had last year, it does not help him an awful lot to get twice as much money per bushel for it. So, from the cash point of view, the wheat farmer has not felt nearly so great a return toward prosperity as the cotton farmer and the tobacco farmer.

In the case of corn and hogs we are up against one of the most difficult problems that anybody could face; because it is not just a case of a crop, it is a case of a crop plus a thing that the crop goes into. In other words, there are two factors and we have laid down what might be called a two-headed program which calls for a reduction in the number of hogs that will be fed next year, for a processing tax which will pay for the reduction in hogs and, at the same time, for purchase by the Government of just as many hogs as we can possibly use for relief purposes in order to cut down the tremendous surplus that exists in hogs at the present time.

Now, of course, there is always the other added difficulty in the case of hogs. Hogs are perishable. Wheat and cotton are not. Hogs have to be taken care of within a certain definite number of months. Wheat and cotton you can carry from year to year. What we hope is that we shall be able to get the price of hogs up in the course of the winter; but that is not a guarantee that we can do it at once. There, again, there hasn't been an adequate return and therefore a resumption of purchasing power in the corn-hog section of the country. It is not so good.

Then you come to another major crop, which is dairying. The actual price today in the dairy end of things is much nearer parity than it is in the case of corn or hogs or wheat. In the case of corn and hogs it is less than half of parity; in the case of dairying it is only down about 25 percent below parity. They have had some return of purchasing power, but not enough. There again you have a double thing. You have perishable products—milk and cream—and non-perishable-cheese and canned milk and things of that kind. You have the regional problem because of the use of milk and cream within regional areas.

We are proceeding along the lines of the regional plan which we started in New York State about four years ago. I think they have signed the New England Regional Agreement with the expectation that that will give materially higher prices in that particular region. They are working on a number of regional agreements which ought to increase the price of milk, at least to the dairy farmer. That, again, like corn and hogs, is a very complex problem; and we haven't by any means solved it yet. I might as well be quite frank—we hope that things will get better, and we are working on the problem as fast as we can.

When you get to the question of price fixing, k depends on what you call "price fixing." In the case of cotton, we may do it by lending a certain amount of money up to a certain number of cents per pound; for corn in the crib we have done the same thing. On the other problem of regions—in some sections of the country if the farmer can get, well, let us say 70 cents for his wheat he will do fairly well, whereas in other sections of the country if he gets 70 cents he will go broke. Well, can you have one price in one section and another price in another section? There are a great many different problems that enter into it. . . .

I don't know that there is any particular story in this. I am trying to give you gentlemen a view of the situation- on the major situation. Things are pretty good in some sections and pretty rotten in other sections. . . .

Q. Mr. President, there is a report that some very big or special relief program has been proposed at the White House. Have you heard anything like that, sir?

THE PRESIDENT; That is true and it is not true. What you are talking about is this—I don't see why you shouldn't use it and simply say that it is under discussion at the present time.

Out of the total number of people who are now on the relief rolls in the country which, as I remember it, is slightly over five million—five and a half million—-

Q. Fifteen million.

THE PRESIDENT: That includes the members of their families. It is about five and a half million individuals or heads of families that are receiving relief. Out of that number, about one half—nearly half—about two and one half million are engaged in public works of various kinds; in other words, they are receiving what we call work relief. They are being paid in cash for the work that they do on all kinds of public works.

Now, the suggestion has been made that if the public works fund of three billion three hundred million could take over 30 percent of the total cost of these public works which are now being financed altogether by States and municipalities, if the public works fund could take over the 30 percent which they subscribe to other forms of public works in that fund, it would be possible to take all of these two and one half million people who are now counted as being on the relief rolls-take them off the relief rolls altogether.

Q. And put them to work?

THE PRESIDENT; Continue them on their present work, but give them a little more work so that, for example, the man who is working two days a week and getting ten dollars would get three days. Suppose he is a skilled man, a five-dollars-a-day man working two days a week for ten dollars; he would be given work three days a week and would get fifteen dollars, so that he would be actually getting wages instead of work relief.

There is a great deal to be said for it. It represents a slight additional cost to the Federal Government in one sense. However, it is not any additional cost in the other sense, because it comes out of the three billion three hundred million just as much as if that were allocated to some other public works on a 30 percent basis. But the main point is that it takes two and a half million people off the relief rolls; and there are a lot of people that would rather be off those rolls and working for cash than have their names on the rolls getting relief. It adds to the self-respect of the country, and we are trying to find out whether a plan of that kind is a feasible thing to do. It would cut the number of families on relief very nearly in half.

Q. Aren't they doing that to some degree now?

THE PRESIDENT: They are doing that to a slight degree at the present time.

Q. I am a little stupid. How do you take those two and a half million off the rolls? That is what I don't get.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me give you a very simple example: Suppose you have been out of work for a long time and have to have relief, and suppose you are a five-dollar-a-day man with some kind of trade. You have to go and apply for relief. You are out of a job— your family starving. They say, "All right; go over there to that particular park where we are trying to clean up by putting in new sidewalks and fixing it up. We will give you two days a week work and pay you ten dollars." You are on the rolls. You and your family are on the public rolls and they give you ten dollars a week. On the new basis you are employed three days a week and you are taken off the relief rolls entirely.

Q. Who pays for it, the Federal Government or the State?

THE PRESIDENT: It means today you work two days and get $10. Out of that the city and State pay two-thirds and Harry Hopkins the other third. On the new basis you get $ 15 and of that $15, 30 percent would come from Harold Ickes as Public Works Administrator, 30 percent of the $15. The other 70 percent of the $ 15 would be divided, as it is today, among the State and the municipality and Harry Hopkins. Is that clear?

Q. Yes. . . .

Q. What do you think of the Swope plan?

THE PRESIDENT: I think it is very interesting. There were two very good things in the papers this morning. Let us talk off the record again. One was the editorial in the Wall Street Journal. It is very good and very clear. The other story, which was very good, contained some excerpts from the speech that Arthur Krock made yesterday. And they both fitted in very well together, and they are both very sensible.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal—I have just marked a couple of things here—the Wall Street Journal says that Mr. Swope evidently accepts this as an inescapable condition of the times. So does President Harriman of the United States Chamber of Commerce and so does Floyd Carlisle, if one may judge from his speech to the Bankers Association. Then Arthur Krock, in his speech in Toronto, carries out the same theory, "A plan, economic in form," he said of the program, "has been enlarged and fashioned into an instrument of social welfare. Its precise aim is to restore the normal flow of trade, raise prices and reduce unemployment.

"But its larger objective is to bring comfort and living security to the greatest number of people. Whether or not you believe it is wise, just, or can work, you should judge it on that basis."

And then he said, further on, "those in charge of our Government policies at this time are not complacent. The sufferings of society are uppermost in their minds, and what they are trying to do is to relieve these through new economic measures."

Now, of course Mr. Swope's plan is a very interesting theoretical suggestion in regard to some ultimate development of N.R.A. Probably there will be, in the course of the next two or three months or four months about 499 other plans looking to the future development of this economic and social experiment called N.R.A. And I think that all the discussion that there is about it is to the good. It does not harm at all because ultimately the mere—what might be called the temporary -mechanics of N.R.A. we have seen going on these past few months will develop into something permanent. It will have the twofold object of preventing the tremendous economic swings of the past with a certain amount of pseudo-prosperity at the top and great suffering at the bottom, running down to the depression period when everybody is suffering. Trying to build on that should prevent recurrences of the swings and should encourage certain amelioration of the conditions suffered by the people at the bottom.

Q. Do you think the present is the time for the change suggested?

THE PRESIDENT: No change at this time. We still have to work on N.R.A.

Q. It would be a question of months?

THE PRESIDENT: At least, yes.

Q. Do you think the Government should keep control over that ultimate organization or machine for this objective you have outlined?

THE PRESIDENT: The easiest way to answer that is to ask you a question: Do you think that industry is yet able to run itself? That is the simplest answer.

Q. Do you want my answer? No.

Q. General Johnson said it would not do at all.

THE PRESIDENT; There is a lot so new from the point of view of Government and industry, that industry has to develop along all kinds of lines in order to make itself capable of running itself. They are only beginning. They have never attempted before these new conditions they are trying today.

Take, for instance, shoes. We have enough machinery in the country to turn out 900 million pairs of shoes- shoe factories that can turn out that many shoes—and we use in this country only about 300 million pairs of shoes. Now, is the shoe industry, as an industry, capable with absolute fairness to every individual, of handling the problem of the excess manufacturing capacity, and at the same time of not preventing the improvement of the shoe industry as a manufacturing unit? Now, we don't know. They have only just begun. At the same time, Government isn't infallible by any means. Government is only beginning to learn a lot of these new tricks. We are all going to school.

Q. Do you think we will reach such a top?

THE PRESIDENT: It will never be a top, but better than in the past.

Q. Do you think the industrial magnates will give us a square deal?

THE PRESIDENT; That all depends on the future. . . .