What can you do for agriculture? I do not see how you can attempt to bring 2,000,000 wheat growers up to the artificial level of the cotton industry and the woolen manufacturers and the United States Steel Corporation, which has an international arrangement. It can not be done. I am going to criticise the farmers themselves a little bit, but not half as severely as I did to their faces in 15 or 20 States last year. Many farmers will not stick. I have said this to a lot of the farmers' representatives, but I will not repeat a lot of things they said in connection with the same matter, because they would lose their jobs. But we have to realize that the only way labor has attained what labor has attained is because when labor goes into a strike, if a fellow scabs he knows he will get a soft persuasion with a brickbat, and he is going to stick if the majority agree to go in.

North and South we have had these pools in farm products, and some farmers have stuck. I do not mean to indict them all, but you will not, in my judgment, find a representative of any large farmers' cooperative or commodity marketing organization who will not tell you that the great difficulty is in limiting the production, and the whole purpose of the bill is to get the farmers to limit their production in the domestic market. The great difficulty they have had in limiting production is to get all the farmers, or even 25 per cent of them, when they agree to reduce their acreage, to stick by their agreement. They have had to go to court time after time to enforce contracts. When the discussion was first had on the McNary-Haugen bill there was a civil penalty, and it was suggested there would have to be a criminal penalty for any farmer who did not pay the equalization fee. The farmers have to take that part of the responsibility themselves, but what can Congress do? I am very glad to make these specific suggestions to you for the relief of agriculture.

In the first place, let me say that we have recommended the creation of a joint committee of both branches of Congress to study the effect of the "agricultural revolution" on the demand for man power on the farms with relation to labor and immigration. I understand that there probably will be a joint committee of the two committees on immigration to take up that question, instead of a special committee of Congress. This joint committee will sit during the summer and get information. The Department of Agriculture is sending out an agricultural engineer, Mr. Kinsman, and an economist for four or five months this summer, to investigate the question, which Secretary Wallace put in a nutshell when he said that you should not ask all farmers to stay on farms.

Our friend Senator Capper made a speech at the tariff conference that was held down here in December, and former Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw wrote him a letter taking him to task. In that letter Mr. Shaw said to Senator Capper, with reference to the prices of wheat:

There can be but one remedy, and that is the natural and logical remedy. Let the many thousands of worthless farms, those on which a man under the most favorable conditions can only exist, be abandoned. Let their present occupants join the ranks of well-paid labor, restrict immigration, multiply industry, swell the pay roll, and in less time than the Department of Commerce predicts lands will be worth the price at which they are now held.

If you want to help the farmers you should promptly repeal the revenue law, which Congress would not do of course. It got through

only because the Democrats forgot what party they belonged to and joined with the Mellon crowd. I mean enough Democrats did it to enable them to put it over. No crooked measure ever goes through the Senate or House without the active cooperation of the Siamese twins in the Democratic Party.

Take taxes off consumption and make the wealth of the Nation pay the cost of war, past and future, instead of investing abroad. We have to have some imports. The surplus of exports over imports into our country in the years 1919 to 1924 was $11,016,000,000. That can not go on. We are reducing constantly the imports of manufacturers and increasing the imports of raw material, farm products, and others. Our enormous debt must be paid for by taxing the rich, and instead of helping the farmers when they had a chance, Congress put through a bill to take the taxes off of the rich and leave it on the common people, including the farmer. I am not criticizing. I am just answering your question as to the practical things to be done.

Second, reduce exorbitant tariff rates on the manufactured necessities of life, since the tariff on farm products is a joker. The Farm Bureau Federation brought that out. The farmers put anywhere from $6 to $8 in the protection pool for every dollar that they ever get out of it—and probably it is more than that. Take the tariff on wool. I am sorry that Senator Gooding of Idaho has left the committee room just a moment ago, because I told him I was going to discuss this question. These western Senators got through a tariff on wool of 31 per cent specific duty, which means 192 per cent on the cheapest grade of wool and only 18 per cent on a very good grade of wool. Then you encourage them to use the rough shoddy and try to pass a "truth in fabric" bill to penalize them for using wool and you say to them, "You have to advertise that you have shoddy." course they are going to use shoddy. Whether the woolgrowers have been benefited is a question. The consumption of wool in the United States dropped in two years between one-sixth and one-seventh after that high tariff went on wool.

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The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that drop was on account of the tariff?

Mr. MARSH. Not completely. It was partly on account of it. Senator NORBECK. But this is what happened. A sheep worth $2 went up to $10. That is what happened under the tariff law. The wool producer is not complaining that his dollar has gone down. Mr. MARSH. No; but there are very few wool producers. Senator NORBECK. The same is true of the flax growers. Mr. MARSH. But that duty of 31 per cent on wool was certainly inexcusable. It should have been an ad valorem rate. The price of all woolen clothes and everything else is going up.

On the relief proposition, I am not suggesting now that you reduce the duties on farm products, but I am suggesting that if you want to relieve the farmers, you will reduce the duties on these manufactured necessities of life.

As stated we prepared a resolution for the investigation of the Tariff Commission. We had a resolution which Senator Smoot had referred to the Finance Committee, introduced in the Senate by Senator Frazier, directing the Tariff Commission to investigate and report to the Senate on typical cotton, woolen, worsted, metal, and

textile mills, as to their capitalization, efficiency, and profits, and we can not get Senator Smoot to give us a hearing even on the resolution. Senator Sheppard has a resolution for the appointment of seven Senators to visit textile and metal mills. Since 1922 there have been around 5,000 strikes in the United States, and about onethird of them in textile and metal mills. You have to reduce the tariff on manufactures if you want to help the farmers.

Third, repay a part of the losses which the wheat growers sustained by the Government fixing of the price of wheat. Senator Norbeck is chairman of a subcommittee which is studying that question. I recognize the great difficulty of it. The Government did not fix the price, as I recall, of any farm product except wheat during the war. I have been accused of being a Democrat, but I am sure that after my frank statement this morning I will not further be accused of partisanship, because the Farmer's Council is strictly nonpartisan. I do not know whether you can go back to the individual wheat grower, but I do know that conservatively estimated, price fixing on wheat put them in a discriminatory position, or they were discriminated against, rather, to the extent of about $1,000,000,000. I think the Government should repay a part of that, because it is a legitimate war debt.

Then let us take the question of railroad rates.

The CHAIRMAN. This is your forth suggestion?

Mr. MARSH. Yes; the farmers always insist that for the purpose of freight rate making the valuation of railroads is too high, and on the other hand equally emphatically insist that for purposes of taxation within the States, for State and local purposes, the valuation. of the railroads is too low. It is an utterly inconsistent position.

Senator NORBECK. Does not that date back to the time when the railroads were having really good earnings that the farmers insisted on bringing their taxation up?

The CHAIRMAN. While you are saying the farmers insisted, let us take the other side of the question. The railroads insisted that for the purpose of rate making the value of the railroads was too low. Mr. MARSH. Precisely.

The CHAIRMAN. And for the purposes of taxation the value of the railroads is too high.

Mr. MARSH. You have completed my statement, and I thank you. Naturally that is so, because they are conflicting interests. The railroads pay about $1,000,000 a day in taxes. If the Federal Government might make an arrangement-perfectly constitutional, I believe it is that the Federal Government would pay these taxes of the railroads on condition that the railroads reduce their freight rates on commodities the farmers handle, particularly on farm products, in each State in a proportionate amount, that would work out profitably to both. It should also be stipulated that it be done only in States where the improvements are exempt from taxation. I do not want to do anything for the land speculator in the city lot or in farm lands. These are things that could be done.

The CHAIRMAN. Would it not be easier to have Government ownership of the railroads, because then we could fix rates without regard to profits?

Mr. MARSH. Of course you know my position on that. I think it would be easier, but I do not believe you can get enough votes for it yet. If you think you can, I certainly admire your optimism.

May I point out here that foreign countries are dumping their rubber here and their sisal, coffee, and copper. Are they dumping it at a loss? They are not. I presume all of you have seen the report of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on the profits which they are making. That report is a very valuable document. Our position is different. The coffee valorization plan of Brazil worked because they have practically a monopoly. That is not so true of rubber, although there is almost a monopoly of it, I believe, in territory Great Britain controls. You can not consider the exportation of wheat or any of our farm products on that same basis.

I wish every member of the Senate would read the testimony of Dr. Julius Klein, Chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, before the House Committee on Appropriations, on discrimination and recrimination and action taken by foreign countries against the United States on account of our tariff policy. You can not blame Great Britain or any of the rest of those countries for copying our procedure in the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act. They would be fools if they did not. Doctor Klein reported a very great increase in the exports of manufactured products, and cited the figures showing the increase in 1925 over 1924: Automotives, 26.5 per cent; rubber goods, 24 per cent; chemicals, 7.5 per cent; silk hosiery, 49.9 per cent; cotton cloth 8.7 per cent; meat products, 4 per cent; canned goods, 15.88 per cent.

The next suggestion is to shut off immigration for a period of years with the possible exception of some seasonal labor. The irony of the situation in Congress is sometimes quite strong. Here you had representations of the farm organizations, this committee of 22 which sprang Medusa-like over night from among the farm land speculators, indorsing a certain bill, and you had others also down here saying to you, "You have to provide means to enable us to sell our great surplus profitably." Over before the House Committee on Immigration you had representatives of the farm organizations, particularly cotton and beet sugar people, saying you must repeal the restrictions of the immigration law and let more immigrants in, and repeal the $8-head tax and $10-visa charge on Mexicans and others from nonquota countries, and let the immigrants come in. Over here they have told you one thing. Over on the House side they have told the reverse.

You can get farmers to work in the field, in the beet fields, if you pay them enough. I was talking last June with a former Governor of the State of Minnesota, John Lind. He was Wilson's special representative to Mexico on two or three enterprises. I asked him what they were going to do about the Mexicans. He said, "We have to have them because the Americans will not work in the beet fields." said to him, "If you paid them $5 a day, don't you reckon they would?" He said, "Yes," and mind you, we have just increased the tariff on sugar in order to enable them to pay fair wages, and then they turn around and say, "Give us cheap Mexican labor."

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Encourage the nonowning and less fortunate farmers to go into industry and to quit trying to work the farms and to produce a surplus.

You can not overnight create a market for all that can be raised on the farms of the United States. A gentleman representing the Department of Agriculture, who has just been out in the far West, on the Pacific coast, told me yesterday that they are actually going to try to make the farmers take out a license before they go into farming out there, because they have more farms than can possibly maintain the farmers on present prices and production.

The CHAIRMAN. Where is that?

Mr. MARSH. In California.

You talk about guaranteeing the farmers a return as you guarantee the railroads a return. That was unjustifiable, but I call attention to this difference. We have had the Interstate Commerce Commission, which is supposed at least, to pass upon the valuation of railroads, which does not permit the planning of a railroad unless there is some necessity for it. At least, that is the theory. I am discussing the theory. Our theory has been that everybody can go out into farming, and then the Government ought to see that they make a fair profit. Senator NORBECK. Mr. Marsh, I do not think that is a fair statement.

Mr. MARSH. I did not mean to be unfair. I am referring to the statements made before you.

Senator NORBECK. We have insisted that the farmer be given just the same chance as others, and not a guaranty of profits.

Mr. MARSH. It comes to the same thing, when they refer to these protected industries and to the railroads, and to the beneficiaries of patents.

The CHAIRMAN. Any protected industry gets the benefit of the tariff. One of the theories of this bill is that the farmer does not get the benefit of the tariff.

Mr. MARSH. And he never can. It is not a theory. It is a fact. The CHAIRMAN. That is what we would like to hear you on, because that is one of the principal objects of this bill, to give him the benefit of the tariff.

Mr. MARSH. Mr. Chairman, do not take my word. Take the word of the illustrious gentleman who, until the next election, is in the White House. He went out to address the Farm Bureau Federation in Chicago last fall. What did he say? He said the farmers pay 2 per cent of the tariff. About 30 or 35 per cent of the population are farmers, and they have had about the highest tariff in their history, and if, as a result of it, they are so poor that they can pay only 2 per cent of the tariff, as stated by President Coolidge, it is quite obvious that they are getting nothing out of the tariff and they can not get anything out of the tariff. He is correct, because of the fact that they have to sell in the world market. I have tried to point out that no effort to organize 2,000,000 wheat growers, or 1,700,000 cotton growers into a pool can work. None of the smaller pools, with few exceptions, are unqualifiedly successful. The farmer, if he tries to get rich by aping Wall Street, is going to learn that he has just about as much chance as a "lamb going into the stock market in New York, and no more.

Senator NORBECK. You have stated here that one of the troubles with the farmer was that he speculated, and utterly failed in his speculations, and went broke. Still you keep arguing that he is still a speculator. I think Senator Gooding is more nearly right.