AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 161

Mr. Kercuam. If you will just permit, I should like to just follow
up my question.

Mr. CaveErNo. May I cite one other?

Legislation drawn to stop oil output waste made public.

And let me predict to you that before you get through with it,
you will find that the oil people will be using a “conservation fee.’
We know how their ‘lubrication fee’” has been used. But they will
have to come in with a conservation fee to save themselves, and so
will the coal people. They all have to recognize a unity, not one
which they wish to make.

Mr. Kercaam. If I understand your idea, fundamentally you
approach this whole question with the thought that all the attempts
at cooperative marketing and organization have been destroyed—
at least have fallen short in themselves—by reason of rivalries and
jealousies and confusion of interests here and there among the
farmers themselves—that a tremendous group organization in the
United States is hardly to be expected outside of something of a
governmental agency set up?

Mr. CaverNo. You did that with the railroads. Let me illustrate
that. I live alongside the Frisco Railroad. It runs through my
farm. (Reads from clipping:)

Frisco right of way will be beautified.

Now, Mr. Yoakum here can tell you something about how the
Frisco Railroad went into the hands of a receiver, because he was
president of it when it did. Frisco stock, you will find, is away
above par now and paying 7 per cent dividends on the capital stock.
Who did that?

They were in bakruptcy, when my land was worth something and
now they are putting tulips on their right of wv -=' ¥ =n not cut
the weeds from my side of the fence, unless uw my bare
hands—that has been done by legislation.

Mr. Fort. Right on the subject of the Frisco reorganization, I
know some people who were wiped out and lost all they had in that
property before the present reorganization which cut down the
capital stock and the bonds tremendously.

Mr. Cavervo. Exactly.

Mr. Fort. Before they were able to pay 7 per cent.

Mr. Caverno. Exactly.

Mr. Fort. They went through that deflation.

Mr. Caverno. Exactly, but the Government could not allow
that anarchy in railroads to exist and it gave them the helpful legis-
lation of the Cummins-Esch law. I do not know what I should have
done, but I think I should have voted for the Cummins-Esch law.
You can not bankrupt your railroads; you can not have that anarchy,
and you have got to give us that same centralized direction.

Mr. Kercuam. I appreciate your fair mindedness on this subject.
Have you ever given thought to the fact that to-day agriculture
represents approximately 29 per cent of the people: Granted that
the board is set up, granted that it works as you hope it will work,
and as I believe you expect it will work, have you ever given any
thought to what the other 71 per cent of the people might do when
they, discover the possibilities in any kind of an orcanization of that
sort?