AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
Congress. We always have the right of repeal and the right of
amendment of those things, so I am not apprehensive of those things
at all.

I have heard some people speak of the matter of the human equation
in this thing. If I know anything at all about the history of human
Jevelopment and the development of the Government and the
governmental agencies, it is all human. There is nothing automatic
about any of it. You are not going to get any automatic relief in
this thing. There is no panacea about it, as I see it. It is not a
fact that this, that, or the other thing is going to accomplish it. It
is the use and application made of the machinery you gentlemen set
up that is going to determine it after all, and that 1s where your human
element comes in. If you get one kind of men to administer the law,
they can almost take a good law and make a bad one of it, while
another kind could almost take a bad law and make a good one of
it. That is fundamental.

Those things are matters of detail which have to be considered, but
[ think they sould not be allowed to interfere with the opportunity to
put into effect an effort to realize some measure of relief to the
agricultural situation.

In other words, I think that the main thing we need is to establish
some point of departure from a policy of laissez faire, a policy of
letting it alone, and letting it drift. We have to start somewhere,
and as far as I am concerned, this is as good a point to start as any.

[—we talk about “I,” and we can not help using the personal
pronoun when we are discussing a thing we are concerned with—
[ was reared in an ultra-conservative school of political and economic
thought. I will make confession right now, that I have said more and
written more on the other side of this proposition than I have ever
said or written on this side of it. In other words, it was only after a
creat deal of thought and consideration that I got my own consent
and it was not a matter of coercion. It was a matter of getting my
own consent—to ever agreeing that it was wise for the Governemnt to
exercise any sort of intervention in such affairs, but I have reached

that position, and to my mind now, I do not understand why I did not
think that way all along, because, realizing the utter impossibility of
the farmer to prevent a surplus, and realizing the disastrous effects of
that surplus when it does come into existence, realizing the farmer is
absolutely helpless in the face of the situation realizing that the
rrower to-day of the commodity has not one single solitary thing to
say about fixing the price of the commodity, it seems to me there is
nothing left for us to do but to accept some sort of governmental
padiaery to deal with that situation, at least to try it, always with
as Sow fa rr doesn’t work, we can change it. If it does
a : g ged against it, we can absolutely repeal it. That
true, 0 all the legislation that was ever set up.

: will leave these figures with the committee, if anybody should
out ° 4 Jog: ok them. They are really very interesting, because they
ok =u i very Jaart of Jhis matter of the creating of this surplus,
tbe ago, I think it is one of the wise provisions of

fied at the farmer can not do that.

Mr. CLARKE. -] happened to be a director of the Dai ’
n our hone State, which furnishes milk to New York City. os

ir history that we have a shortage of milk supply in New York

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