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But in the next few years American agriculture can face the same dangers it did after World War I. In the early twenties the Nation failed to maintain outlets for the new productive capacity of our agricultural plant. It failed to provide means to protect the farmer while he adjusted his acreage to peacetime demands. The result we all remember too well.
Our record is not just the longest peacetime expansion in history but an economic and social revolution of hope based on work, incentives, growth, and opportunity; a revolution of compassion that led to private sector initiatives and a 77-percent increase in charitable giving; a revolution that at a critical moment in world history reclaimed and restored the American dream.
The Federal Government probably has no peacetime authority to regulate wages, prices, or profits in coal at the mines or among dealers, but by ascertaining and publishing facts it can exercise great influence. The source of the difficulty in the bituminous coal fields is the intermittence of operation which causes great waste of both capital and labor.
The estimates for the United States Maritime Commission and War Shipping Administration provide for the transition of shipping operation from a war to a peace basis; the sale, chartering, or lay-up of much of the war-built fleet; and for a program of ship construction of some 84 million dollars in the fiscal year 1947 to round out the merchant fleet for peacetime use.
In 1915 her own production of these things had fallen to 15.1 per cent. of her already inadequate peacetime output. In 1917 it had fallen to 2.1 per cent. The Soviet Government is making efforts to raise it, and is planning new factories exclusively for the making of these things.
The Budget total for the next fiscal year, the year that ends on June 30, 1947, is estimated at just above 35.8 billion dollars-about a third of the budgets for global war, although nearly four times the prewar budgets. This estimate is based on the assumption that a rapid liquidation of the war program will be associated with rapid reconversion and expansion of peacetime production.
Through the use of the waters of the Columbia River, for example, we are creating a rich agricultural area as large as the State of Delaware. At the same time, we are producing power at Grand Coulee and at Bonneville which played a mighty part in winning the war and which will found a great peacetime industry in the Northwest.
Agriculture is prepared to demonstrate that it can make a peacetime contribution as great as its contribution toward the winning of the war.
The so-called "aftermath of war" expenditures account for a further 30 percent of the total. The total of all other programs, which was drastically cut during the war, is increasing again as liquidation of the war program proceeds and renewed emphasis is placed on the peacetime objectives of the Government. On the other side of the ledger, net receipts are estimated at 31.5 billion dollars.
Through a program of this character we can maintain a national income high enough to provide for an orderly retirement of the public debt along with reasonable tax reduction. Our present tax system geared primarily to war requirements must be revised for peacetime so as to encourage private demand.
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