164

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
Mr. Wirriams. No.

Mr. Caverno. I mean Pennsylvania. You have another shirt to
wash.

Mr. Wirniams. I have not any shirt to wash. There was not a
dollar improperly spent in a primary in Illinois, and we have a
spectacle of a State that has more population than six States operating
as one.

Mr. Caverno. I have lived there most of my life, and I know the
problem. Keep that out of the record about the “shirt to wash.”
Tt has no place in the record.

Mr. WiLLiams. You need not keep out what I said, because the
State of Illinois has been outraged.

Mr. CaverNo. It does simply mean that that little bunch of letters
represent our economic handicap as compared with those great sums
of money that were spent there. I am not saying there was a cent
spent improperly in the State of Pennyslvnia. I am presenting that
volume of expenditures. I tell you that that was for economic influ-
ence through Congress, and there is a challenge to that little bunch
of letters.

Mr. CLARKE. Are you going to get to the working portions of the
bill?

Mr. Cavervo. I will get to it now, and I will approach it from the
standpoint of the Republican politician.

Mr. Fort. I object to that. I happen to be a Republican, but I
do not think this is a partisan question in any sense whatever, or ever
has been.

Mr. Caverxo. Mr. Fort, I simply want to bring up what the
Western farmer who has always been a supporter of the Republican
Party and the tariff——-

Mr. Fort. That has nothing to do with it.

Mr. WiLLiams. You recognize that the five Republican States of
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, produce practically
one-third of all the manufactured goods in the United States.

Mr. Caverno. Exactly.

Mr. WiLriams. Then why do ®pu talk about the industrial East?
New England produces less than 10 per cent of the manufactured
goods. If you want to commence by. striking down industries, you
should commence striking down those in your own country.

Mr. CaverNo. I want to give you the psychology of the Western
farmer who has always——

Mr. Fort. We have had a great deal of testimony here about
things that have nothing to do with the bill, and I think politics is one
of them. You have now stated that you favor a board and favor an
organization of the farmers and some means to reduce production, in
your references to the oil tax, etc.——

Mr. Caverno. No; I did not state that yet, Mr. Fort. I just
used that as an illustration of how inevitably great interests, and
farming among them, would be driven to this centralization to protect
themselves from their own competition. .
i. Fort. By a tax to decrease production? That is what you

Mr. CaverNo. Oh, no.

Mr. Fort. In the oil industry?