world and in the cheapest market in the world, but he is not permitted to buy in that market. The pauper dollar that he gets in Europe he is bound to bring back and turn over partly to the Steel Trust and people of that sort. I leave it to you, gentlemen, as business men if you know of any man, company, or corporation that ever succeeded by buying dear and selling cheap.

As I said, I am president and manager of one of the most successful cooperatives in the East. We have our own elevator. We control the price of wheat within limits in our neighborhood. We have our own bank. We control upward of $1,000,000 worth of assets. But I want to say if I followed the advice of the United States Government with reference to that business it would be bankrupt witin 60 days. I can sell cheap because I buy cheap. I save the farmer a matter of $5 or $6 a ton on his bran and mill feed, and I have been able to raise the price of his wheat in our locality an average of 10 cents a bushel, but that does not let the farmer out. We are able to do that for him and we are glad that we are able to do it. We have a thousand farmers in our cooperative out of a total of 2,500. We ought to have them all, but we can not get them. The farmers are hard to organize. We have a thousand farmers in our organization. They believe in me. I have used every effort and all the ability I have to put them over and to help them in every way, and we have done it through business methods.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us come down to the proposed bill, the confidential print that we have before us and which we are considering. What have you to say about that?

Mr. MISH. Do you mean the one that I filed?

The CHAIRMAN. No. You did not file any bill, did you?

Mr. MISH. No. I merely filed the letter which I read a few moments ago.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you think of the particular bill that is proposed by the farmers who have been before us?

Mr. MISH. So far as I know I think the bill is all right. It covers the points that I stated in my letter. You must have legislation the intent of which is to help the farmer. If you do not have the intent, of course you will accomplish nothing.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you think about the method that is proposed in the bill for handling the surplus products, for instance, the wheat?

Mr. MISH. I have not gone into the details of that at all.

The CHAIRMAN. We are concerned about that. We are very much concerned to get a remedy. This is the one bill that seems to meet the approval of all of the organizations that have been before us and if you have studied it I would like to get your idea about it. Mr. Misн. In reference to the particular bill?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; the bill the committee is now considering. Mr. MISH. I have read the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think the method provided for handling of surplus agricultural products will work out?

Mr. MISH. I think so.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think we ought to approve the bill?
Mr. MISH. I think so.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you favor it?

Mr. MISH. I do; yes, sir. Of course you may have other bills that would be effective.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes; we may have, and we have had a good many bills presented to us.

Mr. MISH. I presume so, and that has been the trouble. You have had a confusion of bills, but I think the enemy, as I said in my letter, of all or any real remedies for the farmer use that to throw confusion. They want to throw confusion into the situation.

The CHAIRMAN. Those who oppose the legislation will use that method, of course.

Mr. MISH. In every way possible. I have studied this matter from the standpoint of the farmer. I am thoroughly united with the farmer because my interests are absolutely those of the farmer. I want to see some legislation which will put him on an equal footing with other business; but I do not think the Jardine bill will amount to anything. I do think that this bill which, as I understand it, has been introduced by the committee from the western States, meets my approval. Of course it could be toned down. If I were drawing the bill myself I might take other lines that would be satisfactory

to me.

You must have capital. I have been connected with capital all my life, handled capital, believe in capital, worked capital and used it, and I believe in capitalistic civilization and the benefits of capital. I can not work without capital. You might as well start a carpenter to work without a hammer and saw as to ask me to work without capital.

The CHAIRMAN. Does that give us your general idea about the situation?

Mr. MISH. Yes; I think so.

STATEMENT OF CHESTER H. GRAY, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION

The CHAIRMAN. Will you state your name and tell us just whom you represent?

Mr. GRAY. My name is Chester H. Gray. I am the Washington representative of the American Farm Bureau Federation, with offices in the Munsey Building, Washington, D. C. I testified 10 days ago on tentative draft No. 1 before the House Committee on Agriculture and was occupied in that testimony, I believe, four different sessions of the Committee on Agriculture of the House.

and

The CHAIRMAN. We do not want much of anything that is not material. We are anxious to get along as rapidly as we can. We would like to have everybody use their judgment, of course, because we are not going to stop you at all, but we want to save just as much time as we possibly can. This is an important matter and we want to give to it all the time that is necessary, at the same time we want to conserve our time as much as we can. Mr. GRAY. What I was preparing to say was substantially that I have been testifying before that committee, and I do not desire to repeat before this committee, unless it is absolutely necessary, the gist of the testimony which was presented before the House Committee on Agriculture, because it is of record there and can be made available for the use of this committee.

I merely wish to state this morning in a very brief and succinct way a few facts in regard to this legislation. The main fact or the first fact I want to bring to your attention is that the American Farm Bureau Federation is now and has been for several years in favor of legislation which would by some method or another remove the surplus from the markets in such way as would keep that surplus from being such a deterrent and having such a down-pulling tendency on the market. In former sessions the American Farm Bureau Federation stood for the McNary-Haugen bill as a temporary or as an emergency proposition. We are standing now for the bill which lies before you, not as a temporary or as an emergency proposition, although it might be classed as an emergency, but as a permanent, long-time policy which will bring agricultural products to a more equitable and more profitable basis when it comes to selling them, largely through the instrumentality of withholding, handling, processing, and marketing the surplus. We seem to realize in the American Farm Bureau Federation, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, that in the last 10 years agriculture in America has been going through an epochal period perhaps comparable to that period which in England the agriculturalists went through soon after the Revolutionary War. What I mean to say is that our country is becoming highly industrialized. Even out in my own State of Missouri we can see from the evidence that industry is growing, is prospering and rightly so. Nobody criticizes that, but agriculture is not keeping pace; that is, agriculture is not keeping pace if we measure pace by prosperity. Something needs to be done, not of a drastic nature, but of a fundamentally sound nature, in America, legislatively and agriculturally speaking, in the next five or ten years, so that agriculture will be placed in a position where it more accurately and adequately can make a profit in its business comparable to industry, or else the trend of industry in America will be accelerated, and the downward trend of agriculture will follow that which 100 or more years ago was evidenced in England.

In other words, when I say agriculture is faced in the present 10year decade with an epochal situation, I mean that if the Congress of the United States, if the farmers of America, if the farm organizations of America, if the people, metropolitan as well as urban in character, do not realize the fundamental agricultural question before them and solve it, it will mean only one thing, that agriculture more and more in the years to come will be secondary to other interests in the country and will come to a position of inferior consideration so that we will become to a large extent an industrialized nation, as England is, and agriculture in America will be, as it is in England, noticeably in the second place.

I cite England as being a startling example of where agriculture has gotten in the last 150-year period by inattention to agricultural affairs. I cite America as being a comparable nation in the condition of developments which we are getting into. Our population is becoming urban. Forty per cent of it is farm population now and 60 per cent approximately is in town. That has a tremendous effect in this trend about which I am talking. If the trend goes on (and it will go on if the profit in agriculture is not made comparable to the profits in other walks of life, because the big thing that makes people leave the farm for the town is the fact that they can make more

money in town and have better environments and better enjoyments of life than on the farm) and is not checked, partly by legislation and partly by other forces, it will be indicative that agriculture in America, to use a common expression, will play second fiddle to other enterprises in our Commonwealth.

This legislation that I am speaking of—and I am going to speak of this one particular bill before us unless the committee wants to ask me questions about something else is legislation which the American Farm Bureau Federation is unequivocally supporting. It is a step in the right direction to enable the farmers to make from their crops adequate profits, not exorbitant ones, but adequate to enable them to continue in their business with pleasure and with permanency and which will enable them to maintain their parity with other and industrial enterprises. The bill proposes to do this largely through the machinery set up, which I do not believe I need to analyze, because it has been already presented to the committeemachinery set up which will dispose of the surplus by processing, by marketing, by withholding, and by other methods. The surplus is a determining factor in the prices which we secure for all our products, whether they are agricultural or industrial. Under the provisions of this bill the surplus is to be handled in such ways that it is not permitted to be such a bear on the market as to have a depressing influence on the entire marketable quantity of the products made from the soil. In other words, if we have an overproduction of cotton, as we have at the present time, and if the bill were operative to-day, the surplus of the cotton which now stares the planter in the face, through the cooperative organizations, would be distributed, withheld, and marketed in an orderly way in this country as well as in foreign countries, so that the big depressing influence which is now evident would not be so potent.

The CHAIRMAN. When you refer to "the bill" do you mean this confidential committee print?

Mr. GRAY. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. It has not been put in the record yet, has it? Mr. GRAY. I do not know, but most of us have copies of the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Copies have been distributed, and I think for the purpose of having it in the record of our hearings it ought to be placed in the record in connection with your testimony. We will have it incorporated in the hearings at the close of your testimony. Mr. GRAY. In line with that suggestion, various of our representatives have been testifying for two weeks over on the House side, and for the last week before this committee, in regard to a measure which is embryonic, which has not yet assumed definite form. It is a very big question that we are dealing with, and in my testimony I am confining myself to the confidential committee print.

The CHAIRMAN. It is called "confidential" but of course we give it out publicly.

Senator SACKETT. Just what is meant by "confidential"? Are we at liberty to make it public?

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes; there is nothing confidential about it, but that is the way the Public Printer has designated it. It is printed originally for the benefit and use of the committee.

Senator FERRIS. And called confidential on that account?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I have given it to the newspapers or to anybody who wanted it. It is a public matter, of course. Mr. GRAY. We all have it. It is generally distributed about town to those who are interested in it.

The CHAIRMAN. Since it has been considered by the committee in its present form, I thought it ought to be in our hearings. That is the reason that I directed that it be incorporated in the hearings at this time.

Mr. GRAY. This measure has been in process of development for six or eight weeks. It has been changed in some of its features. It now stands before this committee in such definite form that we who are supporting it do hope that the committee can put it in such final form as you decide in your executive sessions may be necessary to be done, and that it may be then reported out to the Senate of the United States as a committee bill, whereas now it is known as a confidential committee print.

The main functions of the bill are briefly that the handling, withholding, and marketing of surpluses and of crops agricultural in character shall be done through the cooperative organizations. It gives the most definite recognition of cooperative organizations in a really commercial way, more than any bill, perhaps, that has ever been before the committee. Of course the Haugen cooperative measure which the committee has reported upon favorably gives recognition to cooperatives in an educational research and an investigational way, all of which are desirable functions of a cooperative measure. This bill which the committee is now considering gives recognition to cooperative organizations in the way of actual handling of farm crops that are produced by the farmers all over the United States not confining itself to one commodity, but including in the bill cotton, corn, wheat, pork, and beef, taking five of the larger commodities. We do not desire the committee to include a multiplicity of farm commodities because the operations of the Federal Farm Board set up in the bill will be of great consequence. They will be running into millions of dollars and it perhaps will be more desirable for the Federal Farm Board if it can commence with five of the basic agricultural commodities and as the years go by and experience may seem to justify operating in certain ways and not operating in certain other ways, adding to the basic commodities.

The CHAIRMAN. I presume if we should enact the bill into law we would not start on all of them at once, even those that we name specifically in the bill.

Mr. GRAY. No; I should think not. They would start with two or three, or perhaps with not more than one or two. We would not have the wisdom of experience to proceed too rapidly, of course. The first idea is that it accents cooperative marketing. Secondly, it picks out five of the more basic commodities and authorizes the board in its wisdom to start the operations in those five commodities.

Another point in favor of the bill and contained in it is the fact that a revolving fund is set up in the latter portion of the bill which will enable the Federal Farm Board to have the finances really to store, to withhold and to market the excess portions of the crops named in the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think the revolving fund is large enough?