AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
329 
[owa, when they voted to give Andrew Mellon a monopoly on the 
aluminum business they kept out of the Treasury, according to the 
department’s figures, $300,000. Three hundred thousand dollars would 
have gone in there if they had not raised the tariff on aluminum, and 
by the same token took several millions out of the pockets of the 
farm wives, the city wives, and all other housewives in this country 
in added cost of the aluminum ware they use. So it is no more a sub- 
sidy than the raised tariff on aluminum. 
I submit that all this is going to be more or less of an experiment. 
I'he whole project of farm relief is going to be an experiment. I 
think 1t is worth several hundred millions, even if you do go into 
the Treasury and take it out, to demonstrate either the success of 
some of these plans or the failure of some of these plans. They talk 
about the railroads. When you turned the railroads back to their 
stockholders, for that six-month period in which they were granted 
a certain income, where did it come from? It came out of the Treas- 
ury of the United States; it did not come out of any equalization fee 
levied on the railroads themselves, did it? No. 
The Cramman. That is what this bill will do; it will take the 
money out of the Treasury. 
Mr. CoxnNarry. The gentleman voted for the Es<ch-Cummins law, 
did he not? 
The Cramrman. I did not. 
Mr. ConnNarLy. You have been asked that you do for the farmer 
what has been done for the railroads. Under the Esch-Cummins law 
you did that for the railroads. Now, why is it not fair, according to 
lheir own doctrine, to do the same thing for the farmers? Suppose we 
spend $200,000,000 or $300,000,000 in the experiment and find out we 
have made a failure; we can quit, can we not? The Treasury is not 
so badly off that it can not afford it. This is a great industry. and it 
is worth the experiment. 
Let me tell you about the equalization fee. This country is sup- 
bosed to be still a country of free men and free industry. "The Me- 
Nary-Haugen bill with that equalization fee would build up the most 
autocratic tyranny in an industry that could be conceived of in this 
country. Here is a fellow who has a farm out here and he goes out 
and raises a bale of cotton or a bushel of wheat. He raises it with 
the sinews and the muscles of his own hands, out under God’s own 
sunlight, tilling it with his own implements in his own soil. If 
when he produces it and comes up to the markets of the world 
with a bale of cotton in one hand and a bushel of grain in the other, 
the McNary-Haugen bill says, “ You shall not sell it. You shall not 
exchange the fruits of your toil and the fruits of your soll, brought 
together there by the mystic elements in Nature’s laboratory, under 
God's sun. You shall not sell either one of them until you pay 
tribute in the form of an equalization fee.” What for; to run the 
Government? Oh, no. To maintain armies in the national defense ¢ 
Oh, no. To keep the Navy afloat to protect the national honor # Oh, 
no. What for? To maintain the courts? No. To punish crime? 
No. Why, to turn it over to some little board selected by a group 
of particular organizations, representing only 7 or 8 per cent of the 
entire farmers of the United States. Are we going to say to the 
farmer that “ You shall not sell your product until vou pay this