Mr. HIRTH. You could not, of course, reach the surplus with a tariff, but what I mean is that the farmer is on a free-trade basis with reference to these surplus commodities, and, on the other hand, his production costs are fixed in a highly protected market and in a high labor market.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I suppose that Mr. Hirth's statement means that the farmer must sell this surplus on the other side of a tariff wall, and hence he has to meet world competition, while the things that he buys are on this side of the tariff wall, protected by the tariff.

Mr. HIRTH. That is a very good statement of it.

Senator RANSDELL. Yes. I am a cotton producer, and I know that we have to export around 50 per cent of the cotton.

Mr. HIRTH. Now, the next idea that is so generally held out is that, after all, it is merely the farmers' problem, and there is a good deal of irritation that the farmer should come in here and so persistently ask relief while everybody else is happy. The comment in your Washington newspapers during the last two or three days has been to that effect. There is a very definite irritation that the farmer, as I say, is demanding relief at a time when everybody else apparently is on the sunny side of the street.

With reference to the first proposition, it can not work its way out. It can not work out its own solution. Anybody who takes that position certainly does it through ignorance or willful misrepresentation. The farmer can not continue to carry the burden that he has carried since the close of the war, where, on the one hand, as I have said, he must take the world price on these great basic commodities, and then, on the other hand, permit his production costs to be fixed by forces over which he has no control, and which create such a tremendous difference between the dollar that he gets for his toil and the dollar with which his products are brought into being. A problem that is as fundamentally unsound as that problem is can not work out its own solution, and whoever advocates that we shall leave it to chance any longer jeopardizes the very existence of agriculture which is on the point of absolute collapse.

Now, with reference to the idea that it is merely the farmer's problem and the inclination on the part of certain interests to use a slang phrase, to say "We should worry"-that also is an entirely untenable position. If the six and one-half million farmers of the United States were in a condition of normal prosperity at this time, they would make purchases running into hundreds of millions of dollars annually that they have not been able to make, and there can not possibly be a greater contribution to the industrial well being of the country than to put those farmers back where they can buy the supplies that they have had to do without, and that they are actually in need of at the present time.

Furthermore, the thing is reaching out farther and farther, and the disease is going deeper and deeper. In the last three or four years literally hundreds of thousands of farmers have lost their homes through foreclosures. In my own State there are more than 28,000 vacant or abandoned farms, and if you will take our delinquent tax list in Missouri, you will find that the present delinquent farm taxes are climbing higher and higher every year. You will find that the foreclosures are growing higher and higher with each

passing month. Thousands of banks have been closed. Thousands of farms that have not yet felt the sheriff's hammer will feel it before you can possibly bring relief through any manner of legislation, and thousands of banks that are still considered solvent will close their doors before you can possibly bring relief.

Up to the time I left Missouri about a week ago we had had on an average of one bank failure per day from the 1st of March on, and then it does not, by any manner of means stop there. It does not mean that the purchasing power of the six and one-half million farmers of the United States have been utterly paralyzed, but, as these banks close their doors, second only in the disaster is involved the country town. Next to your thousands of blasted farm homes are hundreds, and it will be thousands of country towns that are equally blasted, and your little main streets that in years gone by have contributed such wholesome power and influence in the life of the country, are being drawn into the vortex, and I say to you that fully half the population of the United States is already paralyzed by this condition that is becoming more acute every day,

Therefore, anybody who assumes that, after all, it is merely the farmers' problem, and this attitude that somehow, if the worst comes to the worst, he can work out his own salvation, is assuming a frightful responsibility. You are just beginning to feel the effects of it. Thus far the effect has been confined to the farmer himself who has lost his home, but from now on it is going to strike at the industrial heart of your country.

One of the astounding things to me is that the labor leaders of the United States are not more concerned about it. They, too, have assumed an attitude that it is not their funeral, but I think it is.

Senator RANSDELL. I was going to ask you what becomes of all these farmers who lose their homes? You are leading up to that? Mr. HIRTH. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I think it ought to be stated here that on the various bills, not only the two farm relief bills, but all others that pertain to it, we have, at various times, had before this committee in the last two or three years, labor leaders, and without exception they have favored the various bills that we have had pending before us for farm relief. They did not pretend to understand the intricacies of them, but they said "We realize that the farmers' prosperity is our prosperity," and some of the leading labor men of the country have appeared before the committee, and without exception as far as I remember now, they have favored the legislation.

Mr. HIRTH. Well, I know that in a desultory sort of a way that has been true, and those of us who are vitally interested in this legislation feel very grateful for it, but what I mean is, it seems to me if they realized what is taking place they would be aroused over it, and that they would come here in full force and demand relief, not so much in the interest of agriculture, but because of the effect it is having on them, because the condition is driving hundreds of thousands of farmers off the farms to these big industrial centers, and, once arrived there, their first consideration is to earn something to eat for their families, and therefore, they do not have the inclination to split hairs about working rules and wage scales that the men in the city have, who belong to labor, and understand labor's objectives

through organization, but we are driving, as I say, these hundreds of thousands of farmers off the farms to these big industrial centers.

Anybody can appreciate why, with good reason, the labor leaders ask Congress to bar the thrifty immigrants from Europe, but the time has come when they had better be just as profoundly concerned about the migration of the hundreds of thousands of men from the farms to these big industrial centers, as they are about the immigrants from across the sea, because sooner or later it means soup houses and bread lines, just as certain as we are assembled in this committee room.

Now, I simply refer to these general things that do not get into the newspaper comment, and it is vastly farther reaching than the comment that you hear around the corridors here in Congress or that you see upon the editorial page of the average indifferent newspaper when it comments about it.

Then, gentlemen, there is another reason. In times gone by the farmers of the United States have been a great, wholesome conservative influence on the Nation. The farmer is a property owner and a business man and he has always stood for the just protection of the business interests of the country, and the men he has sent here, either to the Senate or the House, from time out of mind, have stood for sound protection of business and this condition of affairs. If it were possible to take the millions that live on the farm and make radicals out of them, if wholesome Americanism was not so inherent with them, I think the cup that has been forced to their lips during the last four or five years would have made radicals of any group of men in the United States except the farmers. They are still wholesome, but I say to you frankly that their patience is getting pretty well exhausted, because it is not fair. It is not fair to force them to accept conditions that industry would not for one minute tolerate. It is not fair to force conditions upon them that the great labor leaders of the country would not for an instant tolerate. If we are to continue to have the kind of a country that the most of us want to live and die in, then I think we had better have some concern about the future attitude of the American farmer. I want to repeat that that attitude is still wholesome, but I think if any other great class in the country had been subjected to the trials that the farmers have been subjected to, they would not be as patient as the farmer still is about this

matter.

Now, with those general observations out of the way I want to say this: I know that you gentlemen are profoundly interested in getting hold of some kind of a measure that will go to the bottom of this thing, and that at the same time is sound and in accord with sound governmental policy, and I do not think that any group of men has ever as seriously and diligently applied themselves to trying to bring that sort of measure here as the so-called Dickinson bill which we are about to place before this committee, and which has been placed before the House committee.

Beginning back with the struggle over the McNary-Haugen bill, from that time on and again surrounding the discussions of the export corporation bill that we presented here something over a year ago, through all of that milling of discussion and consideration, this bill represents the consensus of opinion of more farm organizations

that I am sure has ever been marshaled back of any one proposition since the matter has been under discussion.

The President has stated, and other gentlemen in high position here in Washington frankly confess that there is something radically wrong; that there is an agricultural problem that ought to be solved if it can be solved, but always they have wound up with the suggestion that the best way to do it and the sound way to do it is through the farm organizations themselves. That was the position the President took in his Chicago speech. It is what he said on numerous occasions, and it is what every gentleman here in Washington keeps on repeating, that whatever remedy is applied, it should be applied through these cooperatives themselves, and through this bill, Mr. Chairman, we are taking them at their word. We have brought a bill here that approaches the matter from that standpoint, and it seems to me that before those who have heretofore said that is the way to solve it reject this bill they ought to consider the consistency of such rejection.

Senator SACKETT. Is that this committee reprint bill?

Mr. HIRTH. That is the substance of it. There are several minor amendments that are being ironed out, but that is the substance of the proposed bill.

Senator HEFLIN. Have the cotton amendments been furnished to the committee yet?

The CHAIRMAN. They are still in conference, Senator. They are not quite ready with the completed bill. The basis of it is in this committee print, but the cotton men and the grain men are still in conference and will propose, within a day or two, a complete agreement between the two.

Mr. HIRTH. Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to refer to what you said a little bit ago about the unanimity of opinion as between the different farm organizations.

It has been said with a good deal of justification in the past that the farm organizations themselves have not been in agreement with reference to a definite bill, but never before have they been so nearly in agreement as they are with reference to this bill. In the fust place, something less than a year ago a great conference was called at Des Moines, Iowa, and all the leading farm organizations in the great Corn Belt States were invited to that conference, the idea being to create some sort of superbody that could speak for these different organizations. Out of that came the Corn Belt committee of which I am chairman. That includes all the different farm bureaus, the different farmers' unions, the Missouri farmers' association, and other similar organizations over all these States, and never has the Corn Belt, which is frequently referred to as the agricultural heart of the country, been in as complete harmony about any proposition as it is about this one. I am sure that all of you have read a good deal in the newspapers about the conference that took place in Des Moines on the 28th of January. That conference was participated in by the governors of 11 States, who selected 50 delegates per State, including bankers and manufacturers and other leading business men, and of course outstanding from each of those States, and I do not think that another conference of the kind and with as much unanimity of expression and as much diversity of interest was ever held anywhere in the country.

The day before the Corn Belt committee, acting with the council of agriculture, after an exhaustive discussion, had proposed certain amendments to the so-called Dickinson bill, and the Dickinson bill simply represents the ideas of the farm leaders as they have come up since the original McNary-Haugen fight was made. I am sure that Congressman Dickinson will not claim any individual authorship, because that is the history of the Dickinson bill.

This great conference then, on the following day, indorsed the position taken by the farm organizations, without practically any dissent whatever, and out of that grew the so-called committee of 22, which represents the business interests of these 11 States that were in the conference.

The CHAIRMAN. Who is chairman of that committee of 22?
Mr. HIRTH. That is Peek.

The CHAIRMAN. Now we will get it clearly in the record, there were two conferences at Des Moines. One was the farmer organization, electing a committee to represent them, of which you are chairman. Another was the so-called business conference, called by the governor, where 11 governors participated, representing business organizations, bankers, etc., and they appointed a committee of 22, on which Mr. Peek is chairman. That is right, is it not?

Mr. HIRTH. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. Now then those two committees, the committee of which you are chairman, representing the farmers, and the committee of 22, of which Mr. Peek is chairman, have been working together since that, as I understand you?

Mr. HIRTH. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You are in agreement now?

Mr. HIRTH. Absolutely in agreement. The only correction, Mr. Chairman, is that the Corn Belt committee is a permanent committee. It is the mouthpiece of all these Corn Belt organizations.

Senator HEFLIN. What was this other committee appointed to do, specifically the one that grew out of the governor's conference? Mr. HIRTH. Simply to represent the business interests. The CHAIRMAN. And get behind some bill?

Senator HEFLIN: That is what I mean.

Mr. HIRTH. Yes, sir.

Senator HEFLIN. They were appointed to come here to aid in getting legislation for the benefit of the farmers?

Mr. HIRTH. Yes, sir. To supplement the farm organizations in their fight for this legislation.

Now, reaching out in a wider sense, Mr. Thompson, chairman of the American Farm Bureau Federation, with which all of you are familiar, of course, and which is a nation-wide organization, has appeared before the President and before Secretary Jardine and before the House committee championing the Dickinson bill without any reservations whatsoever. As a matter of fact, he submitted himself to exhaustive questioning about it before the House committee which was finished only a night or two ago.

Next to that stands Mr. Tromble, who spoke for the Farmers' Cooperative and Educational Union of the United States, commonly referred to as the Farmers' Union.

Then back of that are a lot of other organizations; so that you can see that outside of the National Grange which thus far has not yet