AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
235 
the southern soft wheat is necessary for a flour that the bakers seem 
to prefer, that that wheat comes in from Canada without a penny 
of duty being paid. It is milled in bond. 
My investigations seem to indicate that a miller can import all 
the Canadian wheat he wishes. To use perhaps an exaggerated 
case to illustrate a point: That he could obtain evidence from Gal- 
veston, Tex., that the flour equal to a given number of bushels had 
been shipped from that port and use that evidence, and which might 
be made of all soft wheat. We have got no fight with the soft wheat 
men, but the evidence of that export flour, the bushel of raw wheat 
basis—I have not said that properly—of that flour being exported, 
made out of soft wheat, would be used to offset the importation of 
the hard spring wheat, that is, high protein wheat, that the Canadians 
furnish. 
Mr. KINCHELOE. As a matter of fact, this wheat tariff is more of 
a miller’s tariff than anything else, is it not? 
Mr. WELLER. I think so. 
Mr. KincrLOE. To set you right on that exactly, under the pro- 
visions of this tariff bill, a miller at Mirneapoils, for instance, if he 
went to Canada and bought a hundred thousand bushels of Canadian 
wheat, when he shipped it in he pays 42 cents. 
Mr. WELLER. Or put up a bond. 
Mr. KincuLok. Which 1s the same thing. But if he turned around 
and tcok as much as 30,000 bushels of American wheat and ground 
it with the hundred thousand bushels of Canadian wheat into flour 
and its by-products and exported all of it he goes right back to the 
customhouse and draws down 99 cents on every dollar of tariff he pays 
on the wheat. 
Mr WgeLLeRr. That is a fact. 
My © e100” You are a wheat grower’ 
No «ER. We gfow some wheat. 
1LOF. Do you keep up with the markets? 
Mi. LER. Yes, sir. 
Mr. KINCHLOE. Is it not a fact that last vear two-thirds of the 
vear wheat was selling higher in Winnipeg, Canada, than it was at 
Minneapolis? 
Mr. WELLER. Absolutely. Part of that, I think, is accounted for 
in the difference of freight rate to tidewater. The Canadian farmer 
gets his bushel when he pays railway freichts to tidewater eight cents 
less than we do. 
Mr. KixcrLoe. The fact is you do not get much of the 42-cent 
differential that is supposed to be in vour favor? 
Mr. WELLER. To the best of my knowledge, we get none of it. 
Mr. KiNcHELOE. You stated the President spent the summer up 
in the Black Hills. I happened to be here while he was out there, 
and I read in these “farmer” papers here in Washington, the Star 
and Post, which said the President had convinced you people that 
the equalization fee was wrong and that you had already abandoned 
1t. 
Mr. WELLER. The President was not accurately quoted, because 
the attitude of our South Dakota people was not changed. I might 
say that I am a Republican and admire the President for many 
things. I happened to be mixed up in politics just enough to say 
CB