AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

155

be handled on a sound basis. In other words, if that cotton had been
or if the amount involved had been 18.65 instead of an average of 8.65,
we couldn't have done it, because the higher up you go, the less mar-
zin of safety you have, but couple that with sound management,
rood business judgment, and a knowledge of the intrinsic spinnable
value of the commodity itself, and we were in a position to advance
on that cotton an amount more at the beginning than the commodity
itself could sell for in the market at that time.

The effect of that operation was to put up the price of cotton 114
cents to 3 cents a pound locally in 48 hours, and the farmers said,
“Why should we worry? They have put the price up a half cent
already, or 2 cents, or 3 cents. That is all I want. I will sell.”
[nstead of putting his cotton in the association he sold out, and he
realized richt then an apparent profit on it, or an apparent increase
in price, and to obtain that he absolutely sacrificed the future bene-
fits that he would have derived from the operation.

Mr. FuLMmER. And largely defeated your plan and paid none of the
expenses.

Mr. Stone. He didn’t defeat our plan. He simply made it
impossible for us to render the service we would have rendered.
That is the trouble with all these things. There is nothing mean or
malicious about it. But there is a certain amount of retributive
justice about this whole thing. If that pecker-wood is going to sit
on the outside and get the advantage of what we are doing, let him
help pay for it. That is the milk in the cocoanut.

Mr. AsweLL. I don’t want you to think I am unduly persistent.
I regard you and Mr. Bledsoe as two of the leading expert cotton
producers of the United States.

Mr. StoNE. I don’t know whether it is quite that bad, Doctor.

Mr. AsweLL. And I am very earnestlv *n favor of your insurance
plan, very earnestly in favor of it.

Mr. Stone. Well, if it goes into effect I hove 1t will work and you
vill be justified + your faith.

Mr. ASWELT? 1. Bledsoe says all he can do is to hope and believe
In it.

- Mr. Stone. I am in somewhat the same category as Mr. Bledsoe.
{ just hope about these things.

Mr. AswerL. I want to ask you a practical question, in good faith.
[ asked it before, but a lot of these gentlemen interrupted you so
much that you never did get to answer it. If this committee would
write this bill, amend it, and put in your insurance plan as it may be
agreed upon, and cut out the equalization fee and utilize the $400,-
00,000 revolving fund, which is vastly more than a loan, to try out
the plan, and if you were a member of this committee, do vou think
you would vote for that?

Mr. Stone. Well, that is a hypothetical question.

Mr. AsweLL. It 1s a practical question, though.

Mr. Stone. If I were a member of this committee, I don’t know
just what I would do, hardly, and I might not do the same thing two
days in succession.

Mr. Fort. You belong right here.

Mr. StonNE. I just did escape coming to Congress once.

Mr. AsweLL. They interrupt you. They won’t let you answer.
If these gentlemen will be quiet for a moment.