AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

157

Mr. Stone. 1 will be delighted to send it to every member of this
committee. I will send it with: my compliments. There is a whole
lot of good information in it, even if it is free.

Mr. AswerL. If we don’t receive it one month, we will expect it
the next month.

Mr. StoNE. Just be patient, just like we are about this legislation,
“Yecause it Is just as certain to come, Doctor, as this bill is to come.
You will get 1t if you wait and work.

Mr. Fort. Mr. Stone, your bill, froin what you said this morning,
as I get it—your final reason for favoring it is to see that all of a
commodity contributes to the mutual benefits, and not have some
stav out and get as much benefit as those who come into the cooper-
atives; is that it? I don’t say that is your only reason.

Mr. Stoxe. That is one, and I would say too, by doing it, my con-
ception of it is that in any operation of this kind there is bound to
be some cost attached to it. You can not accomplish anything like
that without some operative cost, and that the commodity which
benefits through the operation should bear the cost of it. Then you
can create a fund without imposing on the Federal Treasury, which
can be used for the stabilization of the particular commodity, and try
to make the commodity stand on its own feet and take care of itself.
That would be the thought I have, primarily.

Mr. Fort. Then, to follow it through: In the event that we should
report, by any chance or mischance, a bill with the equalization fee
in it, as now set up in the prospective legislation, and as it has always
been in the legislation, the basis of the thing is the unit of weight,
measure, or price or value. Should or should not any fee, if one is
fixed, be fixed on the percentage basis of the value? In other words,
should not the man who benefits the most pay the most?

Mr. Stone. I don’t think that would be practicable.

Mr. Fort. Why not?

Mr. StoxE. Because your question of value is determinable later,
and there is no such thing as fixing value or finding a definite value.
There is too much fluctuation in it.

Mr. Fort. The thought that is in my mind is this: If we are
fixing an equalization fee in wheat or cotton, shouldn’t we fix it the
same amount per pound on cotton or per bushel on wheat, whether
the product be sold in July, if it is wheat, when the price, we will say,
is $1.60, or in January, when the point is $1.30. Theoretically, could
there be a direct relation between the price and the fee?

Mr. Stone. Well, I don’t think so. For instance, the effect of
stabilization, taking cotton or any other commodity, the effect is to
enhance somewhat the value of it, or prevent a depression of the
value of it. "The commodity would share the benefits in the same
proportion at the sanie time, no matter what the value was.

Mr. Fort. I am taking your own illustration on cotton, and what
you did, that very brilliant operation of your cooperatives, and I
mean that word literally, in the low-grade cotton. You say a lot of
the farmrs came in and took the low price just because it was a little
higher than it had been.

Mr. StoNE. Yes.

Mr. Fort. Now, if your equalization fee, in any form, puts the
same amount of fee on those men who took the low price that it does
on the men that got the high price through the operations of this