328

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
they want to run their own business: they want to sell their own stuff
in their own way.

I can see that fellow in Texas who has raised only about three
bales of cotton. In the fall he takes a bale of it up to the gin and
gets it under the sucker and begins to scratch the cotton up the blow-
pipe. About that time a Government inspector comes out to collect
the equalization fee. He says, “ Hold on. Don’t begin to gin this
cotton yet. Have you paid the equalization fee? ” The fellow says,
“What? What did you say?” “ Why, the $10 to $25 equalization
fee on this bale of cotton,” or $15 or $20. “What is that for?”
«That is the new farm relief provided in the farm relief bill.”
[Laughter.] He says, “ What did you say—farm what?” “Farm
relief; farm relief bill” “I never joined nothing like that.” “No;
I know you didn’t, but your Congressman joined for vou.” [Laugh-
ter.] “The devil he did.” [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, you can laugh all you please about that; but that is a
fact. That is not workable. It will not work.

What else does it do? The equalization fee would create an army
of employees. You can not dodge that. It would create an army of
employees and bureaucrats. And who is going to pay for them?
Who would pay all these salaries? Gentlemen, it would come out of
the farmers; it would come out of the equalization fee. And what
are you planning here? You would absolutely consume him with this
army of employees and hangers-on and understrappers; and that
would come out of the farmer’s own pocket, and you know it would.
It would come out of the $10 or $25 the farmer would pay on each
bale of cotton.

Let me tell you something. The boys who are not members of these
cooperatives are not for the McNary-Haugen bill; and let me tell you
why they are not for it. They are beginning to find out that under
the McNary-Haugen bill every man who sells a bushel of wheat or
bale of cotton or any other agricultural commodity under that bill
has got to pay the equalization fee, whether he belongs to an organi-
zation or not. What goes with that fee? These farmers that run
their own business are beginning to learn; these farmers are begin-
ning to find out that their $10, $15, or $20 on a bale of cotton and 25
cents or 50 cents on a bushel of wheat is going tobe thrown into a
fund, and turned over to whom? Turned over to the cooperatives.
That is the truth. They are finding it out. They are going to turn
over the money collected from all of the farmers and put it into a
fund and turn that fund over to the cooperatives to handle and man-
age and speculate with and carry their cotton and their wheat, and
such other as they choose to buy; and they are not for—they are not
for it, and I as a representative of all these farmers who do not
belong to the coops am not going to vote for a law that makes him—
I mean that—makes them join the cooperatives whether they want to
or whether they do not. And if he does not do it I am not going to
tax him and take his money and turn it over to the cooperatives to
exploit and practice on.

One other thing. They say you must not have a subsidy. I sub-
mit that under this debenture plan there is no subsidy. It is shown
Sg that the Treasury would not get so much money 1n tariff duties.

t is true. But in the case of aluminum. these farm-relief fellows of