Senator WILEY. You have a billion dollars more you are putting into the Export-Import Bank, and I suppose as a result of advice and suggestions it brings about further loans?

Mr. MILLER. It is possible, sir, that that might transpire. Of course those are all on a repayable basis.

Senator WILEY. I understand.

Mr. MILLER. There are no defaults in Latin America today on Export-Import Bank or International Bank loans.

Senator WILEY. With that billion dollars additional, what will be the capitalization of the Export-Import Bank?

Mr. MILLER. As I understand it, the Export-Import Bank today has uncommitted funds in the amount of approximately $500,000,000. The present capitalization of the Export-Import Bank is $1,000,000,000, and its lending authority is $3,500,000,000. The pending proposal is to increase the lending authority of the Bank to $4,500,000,000, or four ond one-half times the capitalization which would remain $1,000,000,000.

Senator WILEY. All right.

Senator GEORGE (acting chairman). All right, Dr. Bennett.

BACKGROUND OF TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM TO LATIN AMERICA

Dr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the privilege of presenting the technical cooperation program with the Latin American Republics to the committee. The program, as has been suggested by Mr. Miller, is not new. In fact, the effort at some kind of technical cooperation on a private basis has been going on since the turn of the century, and before the beginning of World War II, a rather active United States Government program with the Latin American Republics was undertaken. In fact, Latin America is roughly four times as large as the United States geographically, and has a population of practically the same amount, and outside of one of the Latin American Republics, the heritage is a European heritage in the main. Consequently, the ability to work with the Latin Americans is a relatively simple matter.

The desire for cooperation is great. The programs which have begun have been in the fields of agriculture, health and sanitation, basic and vocational education, and in the fields of mineral explorations and the like. I think the reason for this is quite obvious when you take into account that the overwhelming majority of the peoples of Latin America are on the farms, and their dependence on agricultural production is so great, and then in the next place their potential for production is practically untouched. As pointed out by Senator Hickenlooper a few moments ago, there are vast untouched resources of land and materials in Latin America. I think that when we become discouraged about food production and when we hear so much of famine in this area and that, it is comforting to go to an area where so little of the land is in use.

You take in Latin America, with practically as much land as we have, there is only about 215,000,000 acres of land in cultivation, and of that amount more than 76,000,000 is in Argentina alone. That is, a third of the land, if you look at the map, is in this one slim area which, of course, is the only area in Latin America which is completely independent agriculturally of the rest of the world.

UNTOUCHED RESOURCES IN LATIN AMERICA

Brazil, with an area as large as that of continental United States, and a little larger, has less than 3 percent of its land in cultivation, and has a population of less than 50 million people, yet you can grow anything in Brazil that you can grow anywhere in the world in the way of plant life.

And if you take this vast area beginning at the southern edge of Venezuela and Colombia, and come on down to the south, there is an area of about 3,000 miles long and 1,825 miles wide that is a so-called jungle area. It is a great mass of growing green trees and undergrowth, the jungle. The capacity for production is almost limitlessuntouched, unused; and I think, Senator, that is one of the things you were thinking about, that vast timber reserve, among the finest trees on earth. And as Mr. Miller pointed out, with the Geological Survey and with mining engineers, there have been discovered great deposits of manganese on the north of the Amazon, and likewise over on the Brazilian-Bolivian border.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Doctor, on that point, to get a little further over there, on both sides of the Amazon Valley and way down into the plateau region of Central Brazil, in that area the soil is not very promising, is it, for agriculture?

Dr. BENNETT. Some of it is.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. It is very thin soil and supports trees and bushes and things like that, but it does not seem to be very promising for agricultural and food production.

Dr. BENNETT. No, sir; but there are those in the Forest Service who have the feeling that with the right kind of 'timber planted, we could solve this perplexing wood-pulp problem that confronts the printing industry of the Nation.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. I think it lends itself very well to that. Dr. BENNETT. It lends itself very well to that. In addition to that, following the Andes, there is a great area of more than 150 miles wide, as you come around on the slope of the Andes, that is as good land as the earth knows, that is untouched. It swings around in this area. It is one of the greatest reserves of unused land on earth. In fact, if you go all over the world looking for the best unused land, you find it in Latin America in this equatorial and semiequatorial area, and then just across the Atlantic in the similar area is equatorial Africa. Those are the two great untouched areas for food production that are left. Agriculture in Latin America is yet in its infancy, and with the draft animals still the ox, in the main, and with the tools of cultivation still those of the period of more than 100 years ago. The possibility for increasing food production not only for consumption at home but to feed the world and Latin America constitutes one of the greatest points, as I view it. Consequently, we are working with the Latin Americans in a great agricultural program through the Institute of Inter-American Affairs and the Department of Agriculture.

Senator GEORGE. General Bolte, I understand you have a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting, and desire to be excused. We wish to thank you for your appearance before the committee.

General BOLTE. Thank you. I am available to the committee, but I would like to be excused now.

Senator SMITH of New Jersey. Thank you, General.
Senator GEORGE. All right, Doctor. Proceed.
Thank you, General.

RUBBER EXPERIMENTATION PROGRAM IN LATIN AMERICA

Dr. BENNETT. Proceeding with the idea of agriculture again, and of great forest reserves, our industry is dependent for many things in the way of minerals from Latin America. But one thing we forget is the fact that Latin America is the area where rubber has its origin. We found ourselves in the situation in World War II where we discovered that rubber has been transferred in its growth in the East Indies. Beginning at that time the United States Department of Agriculture, cooperating with the government of Latin America, started a program of experimenting with natural rubber.

Rubber has had two great difficulties in Latin America, one with the roots of the trees, and one with the blight which attacks the leaves, either one of which could destroy it. You will find at Belem, up on the South bank of the Amazon in the northern part of Brazil, we have a great rubber experimentation. There on an acreage of about 10,000 acres they are demonstrating that the three-story tree can be grown, the base of it from the Brazilian seed, and then the body of it, the best of the East Indies trees, and the top, which is the second graft, is a top that is resistant to blight. As a result of this cooperative research, I am thoroughly convinced that rubber can be grown in the hemisphere anywhere from Vera Cruz down to Central Brazil, including Peru, Bolivia, and all the countries between there and up north, including Haiti and the Dominican Republic. There is an experimentation station on a 400-acre tract in Haiti, and then coming across into Costa Rica is one of the great experiment stations with rubber.

This three-story tree has been perfected to the extent that nurseries are set up, and it is in supply sufficient to be distributed to individual farmers and to larger plantation growers.

And you go just across to Africa, on the hump of Africa, in Liberia, and you find one of the greatest rubber plantations in the world that is being grown from just exactly this type of rubber plant.

PRODUCTION OF QUININE

We found another thing during the war, that we had lost control of quinine, of the cinchona tree, which furnished one of the few specifics that medicine has found for disease, and we take it for granted that malaria is over. I notice the Public Health Service has warned us that the boys returning from Korea are, many of them, infected with malaria, and that it could very easily be spread again among our people. In a country where we have had such great medical scools and such fine public health services we take it for granted that once you overcome a disease in a country, that it is gone forever.

The truth of the business is, smallpox could come again with its blight if we stopped vaccination, and malaria, which has never been daunted around the world, and which is still one of the world's great