The CHAIRMAN. I am not questioning that. I want to know what you are going to do with it. You are proposing a remedy.

Mr. YOAKUM. I am not proposing to take care of 220,000,000 bushels of wheat if it is on the market and there is no market for it, but, we will control 85 per cent domestically. This export corporation represents only 82 per cent

The CHAIRMAN. I don't care what it represents.

Mr. YOAKUM. But, you can not find a way.

Senator GOODING. Mr. Chairman, you will not have 200,000,000 bushels of export.

The CHAIRMAN. I don't care what you have. You are going to have a surplus. What are you going to do with it?

Mr. YOAKUM. Let the farmer handle it.

The CHAIRMAN. How? What is your plan?

to do with it?

What are you going

Mr. YOAKUM. Why should such a question be asked, Senator?
The CHAIRMAN. Perhaps not, but it occurs to me.

Mr. YOAKUM. I claim that you can not settle it through a Federal corporation near as well as the farmer can settle it himself. I believe it is fair to say that there will not be that surplus when the farmers begin to control their own business.

Senator GOODING. If you can get him organized and get him to do business, he can take care of the situation, because he will not have any wheat to export, or very little.

The CHAIRMAN. If he does not have any surplus then our tariff will take care of it, but, we are faced with the fact that we have a surplus. What does your plan do with that surplus?

Mr. YOAKUM. Now, you are faced with 82 per cent of the total agricultural food crop of the United States. That is what you are faced with. What are you going to do with the other 91 per cent? Let me show you for a minute-

The CHAIRMAN. You are asking a question yourself and then answering it. You are not answering my question.

Mr. YOAKUM. You can not answer it.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Then you say it can not be answered.
Mr. YOAKUM. Yes; it can be answered.
The CHAIRMAN. Then answer it.

How are they going to

Mr. YOAKUM. Under the organization of the farmer. The CHAIRMAN. What are they going to do? take care of this surplus?

Mr. YOAKUM. Everybody else has tried it. one chance.

Let the farmer have

The CHAIRMAN. But nobody has succeeded. Now, point out some way that the farmer can succeed.

Mr. YOAKUM. Nobody has been successful, but, when you come to a proposition of that character that only affects 82 per cent of the total agricultural crop of this country

The CHAIRMAN. But, wheat affects more than that, but I do not care what the percentage is.

Mr. YOAKUM. That is the true per cent.

The CHAIRMAN. If you have a surplus you have got to handle it, because that controls the price. I think that is conceded-even the domestic price.

Mr. YOAKUM. The price controls it. The best way to get the best price for that export is just like you and I sitting down to a table. We have a couple of hundred million bushels to get rid of. We would find a way to get rid of it, and the next year we would find a way to reduce that surplus. I think you told me it required 14 years to get our Federal Reserve Board in operation, and it still has some kinks in it.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; I think so.

Mr. YOAKUM. Now, just answering that, the most important or equally important is the thing that you do not export. What are you going to do, under existing conditions, with 45,000,000 bushels of potatoes? What are you going to do with 179,000,000 bushels of corn? You see, Senator, as far as you heard me this impressed you as having some merit, but here are things that the merit has got to come out of to the farmer. It is the perishable crop that is breaking the back of the farmer, because he is subject to all kinds of methods to beat him out or to take from him more than he is entitled to surrender. That is what this bill is for.

The CHAIRMAN. I think that the marketing proposition is a great thing, outside of the other, but, that will not solve it completely. Senator GOODING. If he gets this organization, they are going to do just as many manufacturing industries do who can manufacture a surplus. They are going to close down. They are not going to grow as much wheat.

The CHAIRMAN. But, you can not tell the farmers of America that they shall all quit producing wheat. They will not do it. Senator GOODING. But, you see that it is to your interest to produce not over 95 per cent or 90 per cent.

The CHAIRMAN. We see that now.

Senator GOODING. But you do not see it in an organized way. I am not quite sure that the Secretary has not had some influence when he advised them not to plant too much wheat. My fear was that they would go ahead and plant all the more. but, if the farmer was organized and was a part of a big machine, he could see how he would get a good fair price, and he would play the game.

The CHAIRMAN. If they were all organized and all followed instructions and did what they were told, and some man who was a great man, at the head would tell them just what to do, it would work out just like heaven, but every man under God's sun knows they will not do it. Nobody can tell them to do it. You can not organize them. You have got to handle this surplus some way.

Mr. YOAKUM. May I just ask one simple question? If the farmer producing 10,000 bushels of wheat were advised by his own interstate zone ommission that 10,000 bushels was what he ought to contribute, if he wanted to slip in and be smart and raise 20,000 bushels, don't you believe that the interstate zone directors, under the Federal law, could tell him that he has passed his quota?

The CHAIRMAN. What would they do with it? Yes. They could tell him that. I admit that. They could say, when he produces 20,000 instead of 10,000, "Here; you have produced too much I admit they could say that, but, what good would it do?

Senator GOODING. Mr. Chairman, surely, you know the farmer has got some sense. You know it as well as I do, and he will see that it is to his own interest to do that, and he is going to do it. He is going

to go along. A few of them will not, but they will be so few that they will soon be considered outlaws in their communities, and they ought to be considered outlaws, to my mind. We have worked this principle all out. It has been worked out in labor organizations and I think everybody agrees it has been a blessing to the American people that you have had a labor organization and that they have worked out this problem for themselves. You have got a better citizenship for it. You have to do exactly the same thing with the farmer. I am not saying this this is the right bill, but that is what we have got to work out some way or another so that we can organizer the farmer and he can come in and do business on business methods just as a great corporation.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to have somebody tell me, with this plan or any other, and use a concrete case, taking wheat as an illustration, how you are going to handle the surplus. We produce 200,000,000 bushels more wheat, we will say, in a year, than is consumed. Everybody concedes that that 2,000,000 surplus fixes the price of the entire crop. You have to get rid of that some way before you can get the domestic crop raised to a price that will be profitable. The only question I am asking is how are you going to do it?

Mr. YOAKUM. Senator, that can not be answered specifically as you put it. There is no use dillydallying around trying to answer it.

Senator GOODING. If you do not answer it, let me answer it.
Mr. YOAKUM. Except in organization.

Senator GOODING. If you wipe out this bunch of gamblers over in Chicago, in the wheat business, and give the farmers enough money so that we can handle the wheat crop, and get the farmers organized so that there will be no great surplus, there will be no trouble with that at all. It is not a perishable crop. It can be handled easier than any other farm crop that you produce, but, unless you can organize him and get him into the game, you can not do it. might just as well try to go out and organize the west wind out in your State as to try to organize the farmer without some help from the Government itself.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not criticizing that.

You

Senator GOODING. You and I are in full accord, I think. I am satisfied you and I are going to reach an agreement.

The CHAIRMAN. In the first place, you can not tell in advance, by limiting the acreage, whether you will get a surplus or have a deficit. You say "Cut down your acreage." It may be that the crop will fall short of even supplying our domestic needs. It depends upon the wind, the bugs, the worms, the hail, dry weather and wet weather. You can not say in advance how many bushels of wheat we are going to produce. That is a physical impossibility.

Mr. YOAKUM. No man has said that.

The CHAIRMAN. So, you have to meet the contention that if you have a surplus, what are you going to do with it, whether you have organization or not? It is not like a manufacturer of steel beds. It is not like a manufacturer of anything where you can stop when you get to the limit.

Senator GOODING. But, some years they buy more steel beds than in other times.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; but you can shut down whenever you want to, and the farmer can not do that.

Senator GOODING. If he had the money to take care of his surplus he could cut down so that it would not be so large.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose he had the money to take care of it, what is he going to do with it?

Senator GOODING. We will fix the tariff.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. You have got a tariff now. You have got to sell it abroad.

Senator GOODING. But who is making the market on wheat? Let me ask you that. Is it not a bunch of gamblers over in Chicago? The CHAIRMAN. Probably, very much so.

Senator GOODING. Let us wipe them out.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Pass a law that will handle them. But that won't get rid of the surplus.

Senator GOODING. Yes. You organize a corporation that is strong enough to take care of the surplus.

The CHAIRMAN. You can not organize one that will.

Senator GOODING. They are doing it in Australia. Why can't we? The CHAIRMAN. The Government could say, "We will buy all the wheat." They could do that. I admit that. The Government is big enough to do it. We can not pass that kind of a bill, and everybody knows it. You do not want that kind of a bill yourself, Mr. Yoakum?

Mr. YOAKUM. No. I do not favor that.

The CHAIRMAN. Whether we favor it or not, there is no use talking about it, because we can not get it.

Senator GOODING. Can not get what?

The CHAIRMAN. You can not get a law for the Government to take care of these crops?

Senator GOODING. Oh, no; let the farmer take care of it himself. Mr. YOAKUM. No; we do not want that.

The CHAIRMAN. You could not get such a bill passed.

Senator GOODING. I have not said anything about fixing prices. I said "turn it over to the farmer."

Senator SACKETT. Mr. Chairman, don't you think it is about time to adjourn for to-day?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; now, gentlemen, I have a telegram here from ex-Congressman Anderson who wishes to be heard on behalf of the millers on Monday. I had hoped we could get through with this thing this week. I have asked the department to be represented here if they wanted to be heard, and the Secretary of Agriculture sent down one of his assistants who told me that the department did not care to be heard one way or the other on this proposed legislation.

(Whereupon, informal discussion ensued which was not reported.) The CHAIRMAN. We will stand adjourned until to-morrow at 10.30. (Whereupon, at 12 o'clock noon, the commitee adjourned until to-morrow, Friday, April 9, 1926, at 10.30 o'clock a. m.)