156

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
Mr. Stone. They are just trying to help me.

Mr. AswiLL. 1 am asking a serious question

Mr. Stone. I know, Doctor.

Mr. AsweLL. If you were a member of this committee, would you
stand out for the fee or nothing?

Mr. Stone. Well, I don’t——

Mr. AswELL. You would have to face that if you were a member
of this committee.

Mr. StoNE. What I would do, Doctor—I don’t know that it is
sven possible for me ‘to say what I would do. I don’t know what 1
would do under any given set of circumstances. If I sounded out
the whale situation and honestly found that was the best thing to do,
[ would do it.

Mr. AsweLL. That is, you would——

Mr. Stone. Vote for it. The point you mention is, if I thought
there was a chance to do something else, or if I thought taking such
a bill as you propose would make it impossible to get a better one
later on, I would not vote for it. That is the way I feel about all
these things. You and I both come from a section of the country
that never has gotten all it did want. We haven’t had but two
Democratic Presidents since 1873, and some of us were not satisfied
with them. We have to make up our minds that we have to live
under a Republican Administration and do the best we can, the way
it looks.

Mr. AsweLL. I don’t agree with you on that. :
~ Mr. Stone. Of course, I didn’t expect you to. I don’t mean
indefinitely, Doctor. We will change some time.

Mr. AsweLL. I understand your last qualification was that if you
i gvineed you could not get the bill, you would vote for the
other bill.

Mr. Stone. I said this; if I were convinced I could not get it——

Mr. AsweLL. Well, stay right there. What would you do?

Mr. Stone. I can’t stop right there. I say if I were convinced I
could not get it now, and that the failure to get it now——

Mr. AsweLL. Might get it later.

Mr. Stone. That would not preclude the possibility of getting it
later, then I would vote for it.

Mr. AsweLL. Exactly.

Mr. STONE. If, on the other hand, I felt I would be jeopardized
in doing it, I would not do it, because I regard the equalization
lee—I hate to call it that. There has been so much talk about
equalization fee, it is like a lot of these southern Democrats: give a
dog a bad name, and you might as well kill it.

Mr. AswerL. That is the better than the position you are now in.
Mr. Stone. It is better than a lot of things. It is better than
ti do I never vole for W. J. Bryan, either, although he was all
ight as an old line Grover Cleveland gold-bug Democrat.

or that reason I was absolutely opposed to everything in the world
that looked like an equalization fee for a long time, until I finally
got mixed up in the cooperatives and thrashed it out, and we were
driven to the position, Mr. Bledsoe and I, that we were forced to
velieve Jp something like that.

Mr. MENGEs. I want to subscribe to your paper, and I think you
had better make a canvass around this table. because it iY
just the information we ought to have.