MR. SLATE: It takes more than a committee, it takes land, labor, tools, supervisory people.
MR. SHERMAN: I can point to 25 members that will take ten varieties that they will test—and pay for them.
MR. O'ROURKE: I would like to say, are we going to wait until we test all of those varieties? We have no information to answer all those letters that are coming in. We want something, not tomorrow, we want something today, that we can give them, information which, at least to the best of our knowledge of today is accurate. And the only way we can get that accurate information is to get a committee together in each region.
MR. SHERMAN: That won't take care of the future. That will answer our present questions to the best of our knowledge, but we want an organization that will take care of the future.
DR. CRANE: There is one other thing that I should mention. We in the Department of Agriculture have released a number of new varieties. We have got others coming on, not only your chestnuts, but filberts and others, pecans, and so on. But we haven't got any organization in any way, shape or form. We can put these out with the growers who test them, but gee whiz, we have put them out and put them out; and look what kind of information we get. We haven't got facilities or the money or anything else to follow up. We have got to have some organization some way, somehow, that could take this material and test it, at least give some idea as to how it performed.
Now, then, the question is what kind of an organization? If the Northern Nut Growers is not the one that should do it, what kind of an organization can be effective to do it?
MR. CORSAN: Now I'd just like to say one more thing tonight. That chestnut blight, I honestly believe, was a godsend to this country. I can remember way back when I'd go into a store and buy a lot of these Paragon chestnuts in New York City in the finest grocery store, and they were crammed full of weevils. Now, the chestnut blight came, and it has about annihilated the weevil, because there was no chestnut to weevil in. And I would like to have some report about the weevil.
MR. WILSON: They are in Georgia.
MR. McDANIEL: They are in Virginia and Indiana.
DR. MacDANIELS: Mr. Chairman, I suppose I should have the chair. This is a committee of the whole.