AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
iE 
House oF REPRESENTATIVES, 
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, 
Thursday, February 16, 1928. 
The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 o’clock a. m., 
Hon. Gilbert N. Haugen (chairman) presiding. 
Present: Representatives Haugen (chairman), Purnell, Williams, 
Ketcham, Hall, Fort, Menges, Andresen, Adkins, Clarke, Hope, 
Aswell, Kincheloe, Swank, Fulmer, and Doyle. 
The CraIrMAN. The committee will kindly come to order. Doctor 
Kilgore, we will hear you this morning. 
STATEMENT OF DR. B. W. KILGORE—Concluded 
Mr. KirLGore. Mr. Chairman, in the statements which I have made 
on two previous days before the committee I have made a defense of 
the cooperatives, especially the cotton cooperatives, mainly in response 
to certain questions from members of the committee. In what I have 
said in defense of the cooperatives I would not have you think that 
I want to make you believe that they have not made mistakes. They 
have made mistakes. They have run up against many difficulties. 
They have been in many serious situations. But in the five to six 
years that the cotton cooperatives have been operating they gained 
a great deal of experience. The trying times they have had, in the 
last three years particularly, have perhaps helped them more than 
anything else in bringing down their operations to an economical and 
efficient basis, and without this experience they possibly would not 
have come to this point in their operations as soon as they have. 
The thought I want to bring to you is that they have found their 
way to efficient and practical operations, and that they are in position, 
with this legislation which we are advocating for handling the surplus, 
to come back and to gradually grow to fill the place that is expected 
of them, and which we believe they will fill. In order to do that, I 
think, and we think as cotton cooperatives in common with the 
cooperatives of the other crops, that this surplus-control legislation 
is necessary, so that the burden of carrying the surplus will be evenly 
distributed over all the producers, and when that is done the members 
of the cooperatives will be at least on an equal basis with the non- 
members and they will have certain advantages which nonmembers 
do not have, in the way, as I stated the other day, of getting a quality 
price for grade and staple or other quality products, and they will 
have the benefit of the combined bargaining power that goes with 
groups of producers and which does not go with the individual 
producer. - 
The final thought I want to bring to this committee is the matter 
of stability in prices for different commodities and stability in prices 
for all farm commodities.