AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

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it and amend it and strengthen it until we put on the statute books
of this country the very thing which we all believe will solve ulti-
mately this problem?”

Now, what is wrong with that? Are we wrong in our efforts here
to try to do something, or must we go back to our people again
empty handed and say to them again that we had an opportunity to
make a start and get some of these basic things on the statute books,
or are we to go back to them and say we just sat down there and
said we would take everything we want, everything that we have
been asking for, or we will take nothing?

[ want to state to you that, as one member of this committee who
believes in the leadership of the American Farm Bureau Federation
and these other organizations, and who has followed them in many
instances, and who has sponsored some of the legislation that I
think is helpful to agriculture in this country, that it is the most
serious proposition I have tackled since I have had my membership
on this committee, and I don’t want to make any mistake. I am
not thinking about myself politically at all. I will take my own
chances back to my district. All I want to do is to try to find out
what is the best thing for American agriculture, and when I once
make up my mind as to what that is, I am going to do that thing, if
od what it is. recardless of the conseauences to me or to anvbody
else.

Mr. KincaeLoE. Mr. Gray, I want to ask vou a question or two.
Are vou through, Mr. Purnell?

Mr. Prryern. I did not intend to make an extended statement.
If Mr. Gray wants to follow the line of questioning which I have
suggested there, namely, as to what the objections of himself and his
associats would be to taking that steps, in view of his statement that
it might work without calling into being this pinch hitter, I would
be clad to have him give to this committee the best information he
has on it.

Mr. Gray. Two or three answers, all negative in nature, could be
given to vour question. First, I think, is this: When any group comes
here to Washington and makes a determined fight for a principle in
legislation, as in the Federal reserve act, as in the immigration act,
as in the Shipping Board act, as in the transportation act, and as in
many others, they do not abide by compromises to the extent of
vetting the enacting clause passed by Congress, so to speak, expecting
later to come to subsequent Coneresses and get the meat of the bill
put in.

In all of those bills which I have named, and others which could
be named, the advocates thereof came here and fought, as they had
a perfect right ot fight. In some of those bills the American Farm
Bureau Federation was participant positively, for fundamental
things which the groups wanted in those paticular bills. If, for
instance, the advocates of the transportation act had come here and
had been willing, under the stress of controversy which that bill
aroused, to have taken the enacting clause, so to speak, as being all
that first Congress would have enacted, if they h ad not gone ahead and
written into the act provisions turning back the railroads to private
operation, which was the main and the prime purpose of the act, we
would have had no cuarantee that at anv subseauent Congress those