AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

21

Mr. Apkins. Or make the recommendation?

Mr. Forr. Or make the recommendation, yes.

Mr. Gray. Partly for the reason that they are far flung all over
the United States.

Mr. PurneLL. How would they get together?

Mr. Crarg. Who?

Mr. PurneELL. The wheat growers.

Mr. Gray. I was going to say it would be almost impossible, but
that would not be true with transportation like we have it nowadays.

Mr. PUTNELL. It is not a physical impossibility. but they cover
such a wide area that it is impracticable.

Mr. Gray. The commodities cover such a wide area that we have
difficulty in deliberating on this thing. If you are going to have
commodity councils covering the commodities, you have to have a
national convention every time the occasion arises. and that may
be three or four times a year.

Mr. Swank. We know the wheat growers have a convention each
year, and every year the cotton growers get together.

Mr. Gray. lf 50 per cent or more of the wheat growers in the dis-
tricts represented by this make-up of the councils which we are
recommending to you, advise the Federal farm board that the time
has come to do thus and so, start the marketing agreement, start
the loans, or what not, then you have a very accurate representation
of what the wheat grower wants done, and in that you might disre-
gard some small minority group of wheat growers who would not be
in harmony with the program.

Mr. Fort. You might disregard 4914 per cent, but you never would
have all of your wheat growers or their representatives in one room.
As I asked you yesterday, you said that these meetings should be held
within the Federal farm district.

Vr. Gray. Each council in its own district.

Mr. Fort. Now, then, you are going to have 12 separate meetings,
and the moment that enough of those district to represent 5014 per
cent of the total wheat growers of the United States, separately,
without consideration of any other wheat growers but their own,
vote for this action, then the board must act, if 1t finds certain other
things, without any meeting of the minds of the wheat growers of the
United States. and without opportunity for them to get together and
act.

Ar. Gray. You have a meeting of the minds if these district
councils, meeting » cccordance with this amendment, went over
the marginal line of 50 »er cent of the aggregate production of the
commodity.

Mr. Fort. T .

Mr. Gray. Ycu  .id have majority control.

Mr. Fort. Yes: but you would not have the majority meeting
together.

Mr. Gray. Not necessarily.

Mr. Fort. You have not got that anywhere expressed?

Mr. Gray. We have not got that anywhere expressed, and I do
not know, in the minds of these conferees, whether we want to do that,
on account of the wideness of the growth, the wideness of the pro-
duction of some of these commodities—wheat, being one and cotton
beine snother. flune clear from the Pacific to the Atlantic shores.

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