AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
467 
can construct the machinery to doit. Thatis a challenge to Members 
of Congress and the members who are under the protective-tariff 
stem. 
In. AsweLL. I have not been able to hear any one make that 
clear. 
Mr. Caverno. I think that is perfectly plain. 
Mr. AsweLL. Show us how the fee will give him that result. 
Mr. CaveErno. It is so much simpler in wheat than cotton. 
Mr. AsweELL. You are not talking about cotton; you are talking 
about wheat. 
Mr. Caverno. If I should go out as an individual and buy 
200,000,000 bushels of wheat and sell it abroad and put the country 
on an import basis, wheat would go up 42 cents a bushel, and it 
would not constitute dumping on a foreign market, because that same 
wheat would go abroad. 
Mr. Apkins. Just as it does now? 
Mr. Caverno. Just exactly. That wheat would go abroad. 1 
paid for it. I took the 200,000,000 bushels and paid for it, and that 
1s the result 
Mr. AsweLL. You have not shown us how the fee would do that. 
Mr. Caverno. It would furnish the money to buy that 200,000,000 
bushels, and every raiser of wheat would have to prorate. 
Mr. AsweLL. Does the producer pay a fee, or would the industry? 
Mr. Caverxo. I am not talking of agriculture. 
Mr. AsweLL. You say you want to put agriculture on an equality? 
Mr. Caver~o. I do not need to on the same method. You make 
your money in the cotton market and I make mine by raising cotton. 
We might be on an equality as to spending money. That is exactly 
where the trouble is. It requires a different method for cotton than 
wheat, and they are all different from industry. 
Mr. Apxins. Just one more question, I want to ask you: Outside 
of three proposals, debenture, insurance fee, and the equilazation 
fee, in all these proposals that are made for the relief of agriculture, 
have not the farmers themselves, through the cooperatives, got 
authority of law to proceed now? 
Mr. Caverno. Oh, yes; we do not need a Federal charter. 
Mr. Apxixs. As a matter of fact, if they can not provide a means 
to take care of these losses, they would not attempt to operate under 
these schemes? 
Mr. Caverno. No. Now, just what I want to leave with you 
gentlemen is, there is the working machinery, as you can see, by 
which the wheat grower can get partial tanfl protection. 
Senator Borah said the other day it was an inverse tariff law—the 
export debenture plan is an inverse tariff law. Senator Borah has 
not read the law. It is a partial tariff protection, the best you can 
do under the circumstances with this scheme, and I will ditch that 
scheme any minute that some better method is shown that will give 
the farmer a larger proportion of the 42 cents tariff. 
Every day the farmer can look at the market and see what the 
foreign price is and see what the American price is, and he knows 
whether his production is penalizing him or not. 
Mr. KeTcEAM. Just a short time ago you said, in your judgment, 
that under the present arrangement that we had all the machinery 
necessary for the farmers to do this thing, provided they wanted to; 
that is, through the cooperatives and everything of that sort.