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