AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
465 
Mr. Caverno. Oh, just to bring them together, is what I was 
referring to there. I did not have that feature that you mention in 
mind at all. 
Mr. AsweLL. You do believe that, do you not? 
Mr. CaveErNo. A tax to decrease production? No, I do not know 
that I do. 
Mr. Fort. Not as applied to oil? 
Mr. CaveErNo. I do not know. I just simply brought that up to 
show how inevitably these big combinations, which would be sup- 
posed to protect themselves are coming to need the same kind of 
help which we unorganized farmers have, that is all. 
Mr. Fort. When you get to the actual workings of the bill, will 
you tell how it is going to accomplish the purpose? 
Mr. Caverno. I will. But I want to say this, that anybody who 
has supported the Republican Party and the protective tariff all his 
life as a farmer and found himself in difficulties would naturally 
think of the tariff as a refuge; and I do not think the remedy is in the 
tariff. I think this disparity would be approximately the same no 
matter where the tariff duties in this country were levied. We are 
not simply strangled by the tariff, we are strangled by our own help- 
lessness. But I do say this, just as soon as the western farmer who 
had always supported the system found himself pinched his natural 
inclination was to think of the tariff; and they did not want to abolish 
the tariff, but to get under it, a protection for all. And I mention 
this simply because as a cotton man I had to meet that situation 
when I came down South. These Northern men were clamoring to 
get under the tariff. We could not get under the tariff. 
They told the farmer they would give him a tariff on wheat—we 
will just use wheat as an illustration. It did not work—a lot of 
farmers thought it would work—and then they said, “We will raise 
the tariff on wheat,” and they did raise the tariff on wheat to a point 
where it was 42 cents a bushel. That was done by the Tariff Com- 
mission, and was supposed to represent the difference under the 
American tariff system of the cost of production abroad and in this 
country. And let me remind you gentlemen that that difference is 
not only what the farmer is supposed to get, but what in justice the 
consumer is supposed to pay. Is not that so? And that has always 
been lost sight of here and has not been brought out as the other side, 
that the people would revolt. In justice they should pay that, be- 
cause it 1s only putting the farmer on the level with them, and I 
believe the American people are willing to do that. 
Mr. WiLniams. Mr. Caverno, I do not know any one is claiming 
that the tariff is effectual in the matter of price of products abroad: 
it is in the American market? 
Mr. Caverno. Exactly. 
Mr. WiLLiams. It operates as to agriculture exactly the same as it 
does as to manufactured articles, providing the producers of agri- 
culture could organize, control their production and effectively man- 
age the sales end of it? 
Mr. CaverNo. I wish I had not been quite so generous giving up 
my time. 
Here is a report by Judge Gary of the United States Steel Corpora- 
tion, and the last report he made, in which he shows in the export 
business they had a very small return on the Atlantic seaboard. but