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.