102

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
Mr. GrRENNAN. In writing up your cooperative by-laws you can
do it, but you can not do it any other way. If I have 600 bushels of
corn left, do you think I would go back and grow corn at 25 cents a
bushel or 60 cents a bushel, at a loss? No, sir. I wouldn’t do it,
because I can not grow it for that. oo |

Mr. KincuELOE. The farmers have been growing it at a loss for
the last seven years.

Mr. GRENNAN. But what I am trying to do and what you gentle-
men are trying to do is to get away from that. -

Mr. Fvimer. They have not been getting a fair price for what
they are selling.

Mr. GreENnan. No, sir. You gentlemen can deliberate as long
as you want to, but that is the way you are going to settle this
proposition. } i

Mr. Former. Under this scheme the man holding his surplus of
the market would get as much for his 2,400 bushels as he would
get if he would put the whole 3,000 bushels on the market?

Mr. GrenNAN. He would get a thousand dollars more.

Mr. Jones. But after he had gotten his price for that, he might
put his surplus on the market.

Mr. GrENNAN. No; not if his cooperative by-laws covered it, and
they surely would.

Mr. Jones. When the majority of the crop is consumed here that
may be correct, but how would you work that with cotton, when we
export about 55 per cent of the crop?

Mr. GreENNAN. I do not know why it would not apply to cotton
just the same as corn. Now, I am a cattleman. I am a cattle
feeder, and I have an employee right now that I am paying at home,
and that is the reason I made the request to be heard. I am paying
a man to feed those cattle. I am a farmer, too. Ihave to work with
these hands. I have been as close a student of agriculture, I guess,
as there is in this room—that is, for my age, and I know when I go
into a bank to borrow money to buy a carload of cattle I have to pay
6 per cent. Fortunately my credit is good yet in any town around
me, but every single one I go into, it is 6'per cent, and until you put
my business on his basis I will always be in trouble.

Mr. KincueLok. The great trouble in my country with the co-
operatives is that you can not get enough farmers to go into them.
That is all right, if you have 100 per cent. With 100 per cent you
could put it over at any time.

Mr. GRENNAN. You are representing us here. You are the only
men we have any confidence in. You are the men that are going to

o this.

Mr. Hari. How can you get these farmers to join cooperative
socleties?

Mr. GrRENNAN. You go back to the farmer and say, “Here, if you
want your price stabilized at $1, you buy up the marketing facilities.

We will loan vou the money to do it, if you want to buy up the
marketing facilities.” If you want this hole closed up between us,
we have got to get the marketing facilities. The board of trade
would just simply die of its own weight under this plan, because we
deliver a certain per cent of this stuff every month,
So Harr. The failure of the farmers to organize, or the impos-
sibility of organizing them: that is. the fact that thev will not organize.