AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

292

Mr. Jones. If you have no organization, how are you going to
handle the equalization fee; even under the McNary-Haugen bill
you must have an organization to turn this fund over to?

Mr. KiNncHELOE. The bill passed last year, and it is also provided
in here, that in case there is no cooperative association they may
select other agencies.

Mr. Jones. That same thing is provided in the debenture plan.
The board may organize a corporation. The corporation may turn
it over to any other agency and authorize it to collect it, and if the
buyers go in cahoots, or the exporters go into a conspiracy, the board
may organize a corporation which will handle the surplus just like
the cooperatives are supposed to handle it, either under the McNary-
Haugen or under the debenture plan. and this export corporation
could buy up the surplus with the funds that come from the debenture
plan, just the same as they could buy up the surplus with the funds
that come back through the equalization fee.

Mr. KincHELOE. Of course, this is rather a departure, and we are
butting into you, Mr. Morgan. But I was a little apprehensive,
knowing the tactics of the Tobacco Trust who bought this tobacco
and robbed the farmers and caused these failures all these years—
I was just wondering, in the absence of a cooperative how in the
world that poor tenant down there, with wife and children in the
cabin, Is going to get any benefit of this debenture.

Mr. JonEs. There is exactly the same machinery that is provided
in your McNary-Haugen bill. If you do not have some organization
to handle it and to turn this equalization fee over to, you are in the
same boat. In this bill I have introduced, and I understand as it
will probably be reintroduced by Mr. Ketcham, a provision is made
that this fund that comes from the debenture plan acts in the same
way as the fund from the equalization fee plan, and I do not see as
it makes any difference where the fund comes from, just so you get
the money.

Now, you use the same system in handling the surplus as you
will under the McNary-Haugen bill, and the board will be authorized
to form a corporation which can use this fund to buy up the surplus
just the same as in the McNary-Haugen bill; in other words, there is
no particular charm or halo about where the fund comes from, just
so it does not have to be paid by the members of the cooperative
organization itself.

Mr. KiNcHELOE. And I want you to understand it is not in the
way of an argument. I am going to listen with a great deal of
interest when the gentlemen come on who know something about the
debenture.

Mr. Menges. Can the Canadians under their climatic conditions
produce the same type of tobacco that you are producing in your
section?

Mr. Moraan. I have not been to Canada, but I have talked with
quite a number of tobacco buyers who have been there and made a
careful study of it, and some of our growers who have been up there.
I do not think they will ever produce the quality we do. They will
grow a tobacco, but it will not finish up like the Kentucky tobacco.
It is just like Italy tried it. Italy has increased its crop enormously
from a normal crop of about 40,000,000 pounds to 99,000,000 pounds
crops in 1926. But it dropped back last year to about 88.000.000