AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 205 Mr. KiLgore. If you buy it sufficiently low down—— Mr. Fort. I said, bought at production cost. Mr. Kirogre. If you buy it sufficiently low down—I do not know. [ will not commit myself. Mr Fort. I would like to have somebody put such figures in the record. I have studied it and I can not find it. I had a great wheat miller tell me I was wrong in this theory, and to prove it he told me how long it took a great pool of wheat millers to work out whole on a similar operation, engaged in to prevent the market from breaking wide open in a period of depression. But he admitted they got out whole in seven years. That is the only proof I have ever had offered me as to the unsoundness of this bill. Mr. KirGore. I think there is a lot of experience that this board has got to get in operating under any surplus-control measure to answer Just the question that you raised, or just how high up or how near the cost of production the board can afford to enter the market and buy and stabilize, and yet not run too much risk of sustaining osses. But whatever that may be or whatever they may determine in the course of operation, they can take greater risks in stabilizing nearer the cost of production under the equalization fee bill than they can under simple loans. Now, you have in a nutshell my thought as to the necessity of the equalization fee. Mr. Fort. In other words, the only real difference between us on the economic side of it is that you feel that the equalization fee would give added psychological strength to your holding corporation? Mr. KiLGORE. Yes, sir; psychological and financial strength. Mr. Fort. And it seems to me that in contradistinction to your psychological proposal that anything which has the Treasury of the United States back of it is going to have sufficient psychological strength to induce the trade to believe that the commodity is not going to be dumped on the market. Mr. KiLcore. We had the prestige of the United States Govern- ment behind the finance corporations that were set up in 1926 in the several cotton States to loan money to get cotton, and they did not handle any cotton. R Mr. Fort. They did not offer to loan a hundred per cent of the value of the cotton. Mr. FuLmer. Is there anything in the Crisp bill about, loaning a hundred per cent on cotton? . Mr. Forr. It offers to ‘advance the working capital of the corpora- tion and permits it—gives it the whole margin, loans it all the funds to operate. And one other thing, Doctor, on that point: You will concede, will you not, that the two boards—let us suppose that a bill was passed containing the Crisp features and also containing an alternative provision to the same board, if it saw fit, to put the equali- zation fee in effect. In other respects the bills are identical in lan- guage, and there would be no distinction in your mind between the point at which the board in one case would authorize purchases and the price at which it would authorize purchases in the other, would there —the same group of individuals setting the price at which it would authorize purchase?