166

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
they made it up in the West. And I saw in yesterday’s paper it was
stated that the United States Steel Corporation may build factories
in Canada. Those men have a chance to get around the way we do
not.

[ am not going to argue on the reduction of the tariff, but I am
simply giving the psychology of the farmer and what I consider
the practical way by which he can get partial practical tariff benefits.
When the farmer found that a 42-cent tariff was not coming to him—
they did not know how it was going to work—then some bright
genius, I do not know who he was, said, ““ We have devised a way by
which the farmer can get not the 42 cents which you say he is entitled
to, but some figure between nothing and 42 cents, according to the
size of his surplus.” And right before him every year is the visible
evidence of what damage he is getting from overproduction, if you
call it overproduction, and I can not get away from the fact that we
have no overproduction. Good Lord! must we have hunger in order
that people may live?

Here is the practical way that that would work as I see it. Take
the tariff on wheat, figuring 42 cents and 27 cents; that is, 15 cents
equalization fee, and 200,000,000 bushels of export of the 800,000,000
bushel crop of wheat. Every bushel of wheat might go through the
very same channels it goes through now, and the farmer would get
approximately, under present conditions, 27 cents tariff. Is he
entitled to it or is he not?

Mr. Apkins. Let me interrupt you right there. I do not want to
interfere with your statement, but here is a thing that I want to get
in, and you are covering the ground, so that is about all I care to do.
The question has been raised a good many times in this committee,
asking the individual where there was, for instance, 18,000,000 bales
of cotton or 900,000,000 bushels of wheat, how much the equalization
fee would be—asking the witness to state that. Now, the agency that
is carrying our so-called surplus at the present time, the speculator,
for instance, he gets all the information from available sources as to
the world crop conditions and domestic conditions, consumption
and probable demand, before he makes his purchase. He keeps
that picture in mind when he makes the purchase, and when he is
feeding it back on the market. The point I wanted to raise is that
no man coming before this committee—I do not care how good an
expert he is—could make a guess on what the equalization fee would
be, unless he had that picture before him; and I take it.that our board,
if 1t is established—it is provided in the bill that it is to have the
advantage of all public agencies and private agencies it may enlist
to get that picture, before it declares the equalization fee, and with
that picture in mind then they can make a guess.

Mr. Caverno. Better than that, Mr. Adkins, if you will go over
to the Department of Agriculture—and this is basic in my argument—
you will find this, that they have developed formulas over there, with
various factors in them, empirical factors, whereby for the last 25
years they could have calculated what the price was going to be, and
Mr. Jardine has a bill based on scientific principles of price fore-
gastr and they can come very close to that, and I should put a
Under a Worsing tnt, Joy in regard to wheat, if it is possible.
aot 49 co © 2 erican tariff system, which says that the farmer should

. and he will get that instead of 15, 16, or 25 cents, if you