36 AGRICULTURAL MARKETING REVOLVING FUND 
Mr. Bucaaxax. Do you mean the employees of the mills? 
Mr. Hogax. Is the big capitalistic farmer anv worse off than the 
mill owner? 
Mr. Bucranan. I wish you would show me a capitalistic farmer. 
[f there is one, he should be placed on exhibition somewhere. 
Mr. Hocax. I saw one in New Orleans, who showed me where he 
had made 100 bales of cotton on 100 acres of land, at a cost of 7 cents 
per pound. He showed me the figures. He showed me where he 
had sold his cotton at a profit-of $1,200. Instead of losing, he had 
made $100 per month. All of these questions are really extraneous 
to what we wish to present. What Mr. Parker has been telling you 
is this, and I will make defiance to everybody here on that proposi- 
tion. This is not said in ill temper at all, but I am stating my case. 
E'am a cotton man. I am in the cotton business. My father was a 
cotton man. He has been a cotton classer and has handled cotton in 
all its forms. He is 80 years old, and is in the cotton business now. 
[ came on behind him in the cotton business. 
Now, that cotton machine was in existence before my time. We 
avolved a system, through that machine, for handling cotton. Mer- 
chandising is just as much an art or a science as being a doctor, a 
lawyer, or a member of any other profession in the world. It takes 
trained men to do it. It takes something that has been built up 
through the generations, like statesmanship. The merchants of this 
country in marketing cotton in Liverpool found out that when the 
cotton got there, there was frequently a drop in the market; so they 
evolved a wonderful system of price insurance, which is known as 
hedging. Under that system, which was not evolved by farmers, 
which was not evolved by Congress, or by scientists, but which 
was evolved by merchants, the cotton crop of the United States 
has been handled on the narrowest margin of profit, and on the 
narrowest spread between the farmer and the processor that could 
possibly be figured on any commodity. Now, all of that has been 
borne out by the investigation of the Federal Trade Commission 
which, after investigating the cotton business, in no especially 
friendly way, came to Congress and gave us a clean bill of health. 
[t is a wonderfully efficient body of men, functioning on a very 
reasonable profit. : 
Congress itself has investigated this price-insurance machinery in 
the cotton exchanges. In spite of the fact that there were dissen- 
sions within and dissensions without, it has never been proved that 
those exchanges operated as a conspiracy to depress the price of 
zotton. I doubt if speculation has ever materially affected the great 
arc of prices. Speculation is a natural human reaction. It is a 
vitalizing principle, which makes us live in hope. Speculation is 
the expression of hope. Speculation comes into the market as an 
eager force and tends to push the market up until it makes the price 
higher than it would have been ordinarily. However, it does not 
affect the great arc of prices. Conversely, short selling does not do 
anything to depress the market. I doubt if any commodity was ever 
depressed below its supply and demand value because of short sell- 
ing it on the exchange. I can challenge vou on that statement, and 
I can prove it. You can not profitably sell a commodity down unless 
vou start to sell it when it is above its fair value, for the reason that