160

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
In the case of the American Cotton Growers Exchange, it was the exchange
that took the initiative in proposing the conference on cooperation, and this
suggestion found a hearty response from the institute, because it fitted in with
the prograin already formulated by the institute.
We have cooperated as I tried to indicate to you a while ago, with
the mills, just as the American Cotton Growers Exchange is cooperat-
ing with the American Cotton Institute.

Just a little incident in the history of the development of this
cooperation. You might as well realize that you are not going to
vet anywhere with cooperative marketing unless this service is
broad enough to include the people that consume the commodity as
well as those who produce it. That is fundamental. In 1922 I
was one of the two or three delegates from my State invited by the
Secretary of Agriculture to the National Agricultural Congress
called by President Harding. I think it was in January, 1922. I
was on the subcommittee and the general committee on proposals
on cotton. That committee was made up of five men, and one of
them was at that time the President of the National Association of
Cotton Manufacturers, the largest group representing the largest
aggregation of capital in America engaged in the manufacture of
cotton. This gentleman had an attitude—not of antagonism, be-
cause he didn’t know very much about it—but decided skepticism
toward this proposition of cooperative cotton marketing. It was
commonly understood and I would like you to keep that in mind,
because it is now, in view of the statement made by Walker D.
Hines, in view of our own operations in connection with cotton
mills, difficult to realize that as recently as 1921 and 1922, when
cooperative cotton marketing had its inception, that the mills of
America and of the world honestly thought at that time that the
success of cooperative cotton marketing meant the destruction of
the mill industry in America.

I undertook to sell this idea to the President of the National Asso-
ciation at that time, and the resolution and statement endorsing
cotton cooperative marketing in principle, declaring it to 'be a step
forward in the development of better relations and so on, between
the industry, all branches of it, was not submitted by me as was
thought at the time. It was submitted by the President of the
National Amensilan of Cera Manufacturers. It was his own
en ara, yner ng, you pave here the situation of the president
nn os , an the president of the largest association in
America, posing the very thing that had been supposed to be
inimical and hostile to the industry as a whole.
elleve you are going to appreciate t yg
reference to this. In Hd hy ovo tint LAF the et hie
we must approach all these problems. They are, after all, human
problems, and on the success of these things and on the success of
onest effort depends not only the perpetuity of the industry itself
but I honestly believe the i y i y ,
on which a : th perpetuity of the American Government
Ich we are all concerned. In other words, we can not get al

or Suis thing with a lot of people dissatisfied and upset and emoral.
ya | cd ave a healthy situation throughout the whole body of the

Mr. FuLmer. Mr. Chairman, ri ] i
: . , right at this point I would like to
insert in the record a short statement from Mr. Rice, an attorney