AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
I take pleasure in presenting Mr. Albert S. Goss, master of the
Washington State Grange and member of the executive committee
»f the National Grange.
STATEMENT OF ALBERT S. GOSS, MASTER WASHINGTON STATE
GRANGE AND MEMBER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, NATIONAL
GRANGE. SEATTLE. WASH.
Mr. Goss. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as Mr.
Ketcham says, I come from the State of Washington. Mr. Taber
told you yesterday something of the attitude of the grange. I can
tell you of the attitude of the granges on the Pacific coast, where we
are very strong in proportion to the number of farmers we have.

Washington, Oregon, and Idaho Granges have indorsed this meas-
ure practically by unanimous vote. I am not advised of the action of
the California State Grange, since it met just prior to our national
convention. But the chairman of the legislative committee of the
California State Grange has attended our national convention and
has been in Washington since, and has indorsed this program. So
we feel that we can speak fairly accurately of the standing of the
grange members and of the farmers on the Pacific coast.

Mr. Taber pointed out that we did not claim this bill to be a cure-
all by any means. It attacks just one phase of the question. We
think that it is a sound solution for that phase of the question.
There are other problems of agriculture. There are problems of
transportation; there are problems of taxation; there are problems
of distribution, which no bill can handle. We recognize that fully.
But we fell in this measure that we hit at the fundamental cause of
low prices, and in the interest of clear thinking I am going to ask
you to review with me the trend of our agricultural development
for the last hundred years or so.

It is one hundred and thirty-odd years ago when Alexander
Hamilton, making his report on manufactures to President Washing-
ton, expressed this principle—I can not quote, will not attempt to
quote, it in his language; but in just plain English it was that if
we pursue a policy of protection by means of a protective tariff
and other protective legislation, that the costs of our standards of
living would all be raised and the costs of agricultural production
would be raised, and that a well-rounded policy of protection should
contemplate the protection of agriculture as well, with a system of
export bounties, which he outlined. A speaker who will follow me
will go into that more fully. I wanted to call your attention to
the trend that agriculture took from that time on.

Congress adopted the protective-tarift policy. It did not adopt the
ther half of the tariff policy, the protection to agriculture; and it so
happened that agriculture did not need it at that time; for shortly
after that our population broke over the mountains down into the
Ohio and the Mississippi Valleys, and there they found the most
fertile farm lands in all the world, just ready to be plowed out, virgin
soil; and under those conditions they produced the most bountiful
crops ever produced in the history of the world at costs lower than
any other place in the world, because of the virgin soil and just the
2onditions under which the crops were raised, and agriculture did