528 
' AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
is going to function directly on this you would get a whole lot further 
with & commissioner and an assistant commissioner for each particular 
commodity than you will ever get with a board, because a board has 
to act by majority and it takes time to determine a majoirty, and all 
sorts of internal difficulties might prevent its functioning properly; 
and you gentlemen know who come in contact with them it is true 
just as well as I do. While they can function as a regulatory organi- 
zation, in general, they can not function as a direct commercial 
instrumentality. 
Mr. Crarke. How long would it take to get a decision by the 
Tariff Commission, if you wanted to get an increase or decrease in 
the tariff under the 50 per cent law? 
Mr. ANDRESEN (interposing). Mr. Anderson, do you think this 
board should be a board of business men or a board of economists? 
Mr. AnpERsON. I should think that such a board should be made 
up—I1 am expressing merely a personal opinion about it—I should 
think that such a board should be made up of a proportion of farmers 
who have given special consideration to agricultural marketing prob- 
lems, and who understand not merely farming and the selling of farm 
products to a country elevator or otherwise, but who know something 
about the general movement of those commodities in commerce, not 
only in the raw state but in their manufactured state; that it could be 
composed in part of business men who also have a similar experience 
and knowledge of marketing. I would not have it composed of 
economists at all. You can always hire economists—and being 
somewhat of an economist myself I know that economists ordinarily 
need some sort of a balance, which such a board composed of 
farmers and business men would probably give it. 
Mr. AxpresEN. The bill before us provides for the President to 
appoint a board. It also provides for finances, so that the board 
may carry the purposes of the bill into operation. Now, as far as 
the bill goes, with those provisions in it there, is it quite satisfactory 
to you and the interests you represent? 
Mr. AnpersoN. If we understood that such a board was to func- 
tion on the basis of creating and aiding commercial organizations— 
and I include cooperative organizations in that designation—in a 
program of price stabilization, understanding that that would have 
to be undertaken gradually, and the effect of, the action of the board 
and these commercial organizations’ interference with the market 
carefully determined, I think that that would be quite all right. The 
point I am trying to make is that the difficulties which we have had 
in the Federal Reserve System is that nobody knew what the effect 
of an increase or decrease in the discount rate or of open-market 
transactions might be. In Great Britain they have had a hundred or 
two hundred years’ experience in it. The effect of a slight increase 
or decrease in the discount rate can be calculated almost on an 
actuarial basis. But we have not had that experience; consequently 
we go in and raise or lower the discount rate and overlook the psy- 
chological factors and the state of mind of the poeple; and the result 
is that we get just as we had on the stock market the other day. 
. Mr. CLarkE. Just as day before yesterday, because of the increase 
in the rediscount rate, and then when those speculators found out 
the reason, dropping down again? 
Mr. ANDERSON. Exactly so.