AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

505

Government supervision. The outcome is equal rights in private enterprise, a
svstem of industrial democracy, parallel to political government. There can be
made effective in industry a code of business ethics—a new idea; also there can
be established and maintained a real equilibrium of prices—another new idea.
I. ProgGraM FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1928

In these United States there is in session the new Congress that is pledged to
agricultural relief, and you members of this committee who are considering agri-
cultural relief are invited to weigh the following program in three main parts
for relief of the world-wide industrial crisis:

1. The plan is for an act of Congress that shall instruct the Government com-
mission, the Federal Reserve Board, to aim to stabilize the price level. In 1925,
at the opening of the Sixty-ninth Congress, I went to Representative James G.
Strong, of Kansas, a leading Republican member of the Committee on Banking
and Currency, and he introduced a bill for the stabilization of the price level.
[ was the first witness at the hearings on the bill. There are 1,100 pages of testi-
mony indexed. The plan for stabilization of the price level is feasible, and this
present Congress, will, I believe, enact that the Federal Reserve Board shall aim
at stability in the price level. As the law is being construed at present the Federal
Reserve Board is authorized to deflate or inflate at will, and without limit.

Our program as a whole is for the stabilization of the price level, accompanied
by an industrial democracy, as follows:

2-3. I have two bills for consideration by this committee, Exhibits A and B.

Exhibit A is for the Federal trade system, to include the commission on equilib-
rium of prices. A fuller description is:

‘“A bill to found the Federal trade system, for the nation-wide self-regulation
of competition in trade in interstate and foreign commerce, under Government
supervision except agriculture, and to include the founding of the commission
on equilibrium of prices.”

The second and supplemental bill, Exhibit B, is for the Federal agricultural
system. A fuller description is:

“A bill to found the Federal agricultural system, for nation-wide self-regula-
tion of competition in agriculture in interstate and foreign commerce, under
Government supervision, to include the orderly marketing of crops, and the
possible limitation of acreage, plus an export bounty if necessary, thus to aid in
maintaining an equilibrium of prices between the vocations, also to promote the
development of cooperative associations in wholesale and retail distribution in
interstate and foreign commerce, for the maintenance of competitive prices, thus
to lower the cost of living.”

The above described mechanism should be applied by liberal government—
government aiming to maintain equal rights.

More in detail the things to be achieved by this industrial democracy are:

A. There is to be maintained an equilibrium between the prices charged in the
various industries, including agriculture, so that the incomes of the various
groups will purchase the output running at full speed.

B. To attain this unprecedented prosperity there must be corrected the under-
consumption of products in this country resulting from concentrated wealth.
By means of a graduated income tax by the National Government this can be
achieved. A precedent was in the World War when the business interests in this
country which were receiving excessive profits were bv our National Government
taxed 80 per cent, as a surtax.

More in detail: In 1924 less than 1 per cent of our people who paid Federal
income tax paid 78 per cent.’ - (Release of National Industrial Conference Board.)
Nearly all of these very large incomes were reinvested, necessarily. This in place
of being very largely consumed as will be the case when in this new age of uni-
versal suffrage and liberal government the aim shall be to apply intelligence, to
the end that our industries may run full-handed continuously, or nearly so, and
that Europe shall receive back her fair share of the exports to Latin America
and the other parts of earth.

That is the problem that is faced by our present-day equal-rights Congress,
pledged to agricultural relief. The actual situation is that there is to be ended
the world-wide industrial erisis. At present our exports are so large as the
result of too high prices in this country by our organized business interests, plus
underconsumption in this country because of concentrated wealth, that our
dumping of products abroad has taken from the peoples of Europe a considerable
part of their foreign trade and they are borrowing capital from us to keep going.

R6160—28—SKR E. PT A— -