AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
Now, that was from New England. This statement more recently 
comes from a North Carolina paper and has a date line of Gastonia, 
N. C., January 28 [reading]: 
MILL CURTAILING HELD NECESSARY—ORDERLY CONFORMANCE TO LAW OF SUPPLY 
AND DEMAND, SAYS WALKER HINES 
Gastonia, January 28.—The present curtailment program being carried out in 
various branches of the textile industry are orderly steps on the part of mill 
men in conforming to the-law of supply and demand, Walker D. Hines, of 
New York, president of the Cotton Textile Institute, explained in an address 
to-day to 100 or more combed yarn manufacturers of Gaston and surrounding 
counties. 
The curtailments, Mr. Hines said, were initiated to ward off what might pos- 
sibly develop into a much more serious situation than obtains at present, indi- 
cating nothing more, he said, than an organized and intelligent effort on the 
part of the manufacturers to cope with conditions in the most effective manner. 
Pointing out that a slight overproduction had been in effect in the industry, 
Mr. Hines declared that respective mill owners had their choice of bringing their 
production in line with demand by acting promptly in an orderly manner, or of 
adopting disorderly and much more drastic and injurious methods of action. 
The Textile Institute head asserted that failure to keep production in line 
with demand would result in an overhanging surplus which would break prices 
to a point below the cost of production. This situation which mill men are seek- 
ing to avoid, would, he pointed out, lead to a very dangerous instability and seri- 
ously injure the best interest of the mill owners, their employees and customers. 
Mr. KiNncHELOE. Are you reading that to get it in the record? 
Mr. KiLGoRE. Yes. 
Mr. KincueLoE. What is the idea of encumbering the record in 
that way? I would like to get your ideas, but I am not caring about 
what these other fellows said. 
Mr. Kinore. I have just two or, three lines to read, and I will 
cover that if I may. [Concludes reading:] 
The Textile Institute head asserted that failure to keep production in line with 
demand would result in an overhanging surplus which would break prices to 
points below the cost of production. This situation which mill men are seeking, 
to avoid, would, he pointed out, lead to a very dangerous instability and seriously 
injure the best interest of the mill owners, their employees and customers. 
In presenting this, Mr. Kincheloe, I was calling attention to the 
movement reasonably successfully carried out already of bringing 
about stability in prices of the various industries, whereas 1t 1s 
proposed in this bill to bring about stability to agriculture. 
In 1922, 1923, and 1924 cotton brought good prices. During that 
time, cattle, hogs, corn and wheat brought disastrously low prices. 
As a consequence there were some seventeen million acres of land in 
the main cotton States that went from these other crops, because of 
ruinously low prices, largely into cotton. Eight to ten million 
acres of that land was in Texas and had previously been in corn and 
wheat and devoted to grazing in the production of beef cattle mainly. 
The instability there in the low prices for these other products caused 
a transfer to cotton, and this increase in the acreage of cotton brought 
about the overproduction in 1925 and 1926, and we had a swing 
there during that brief period from cattle, hogs and corn and wheat to 
cotton; and now that cattle are bringing better prices the swing 1s 
back to cattle and other crops. 
Crops compete with each other for the use of land. As one crop is 
more profitable than other crops it takes land from other crops, and 
mn this way we have a shift from year to year or in very brief periods