WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 291

The immigration act ordinarily is considered as being an act that is
of peculiar interest to the labor organizations of this Nation. But I
happen to know the situation. 1 have been connected with the
American Farm Bureau Federation ever since it was started—and
it is the youngest of the national farm groups, the two older ones
being the Grange and the Farmers’ Union. On the board of directors
of the American Farm Bureau Federation, at the beginning I was
connected with the national organization at Chicago in an advisory
capacity, until I was put here as legislative representative. It
was my function to try to get all the information possible, and I
went all over the United States, while the immigration act was being
formulated, and explained the situation to our people. I am frank
to say that we were as active in passing the immigration act as any
organization in the United States. We are for the immigration act.
We do not want our position on seasonal labor which was taken two
years ago and which is held to yet to be understood as being an
indication that we are qualifying the immigration act in any way,
or surrendering our advocacy of it in the years prior to 1924. We
want it to be and continue the policy of our Government. But how
are you going to handle these nationals of the Wetsern Hemisphere?
And how are you going to evolve a solution out of the condition
wherein certain of our farmers, for the present at least, or maybe
for a few years to come, will need seasonal labor? That is a question
that we will need help to handle.
The CratrMAN. Now, we thank you for that support. Did you
find in any of the Middle Western States a feeling on the part of
farmers generally that they had to pay too much for farm labor, or
that they could not get it?
Mr. Gray. Not a great complaint on that, although there are
certain objections to the labor scale. But our farmers in the farm
bureau nearly always, Chairman Johnson, connect that with the
inadequate sales value of the stuff that they have to sell. They are
not criticizing so much the labor wage that they have to pay as they
are the prices at which their commodities sell.
The CHAIRMAN. In other words, generally speaking, the farmer
realizes that the days of the low-paid farm hand. board and found.
are over; those days are over?
Mr. Gray. We recognize that, and we are not sorry that the
condition exists.
The CratrMAN. Nothing would change it back to where you had
farm hands at $35 a month, board and found, unless there was a
collapse generally in the cities, a collapse of business. }
Mr. Gray. I presume that is about the only thing that could bring
back the low scale of farm wages that existed 25 years ago.
The CrarrMAN. Now, your association has given a good deal of
thought to this movement from the farms to the cities?
Mr. Gray. Yes, indeed.
The CratrMAN. That is to the detriment of the farmers?
Mr. Gray. Yes, sir. Insome ways itis a detriment to the farmers;
in other ways it is a benefit to the farmers. Theoretically, it should
be a benefit to the farmer who stays on the land, but practically it
does not work out that way. Taking up the theoretical side, it should
be the conclusion that if one-third of the farmers moved off the land
and became consumers in the cities, either great or small, that the
two-thirds staying on the land would have a multiplied number of