AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
581 
3. Governmental price firing.—Clearly this legislation involves governmental 
fixing of prices. It gives the proposed Federal board almost unlimited authority 
to fix prices on the designated commodities. * * * Nothing is more certain 
than that such price fixing would upset the normal exchange relationships existing 
in the open market and that it would finally have to be extended to cover a 
multitude of other goods and services. Government price fixing, once started, 
has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country 
has every right to be spared. * * * [Except as it may be restrained by fear 
of foreign importations, the farm board, composed of representatives of producers, 
is given the power to fix the prices of these necessities of life at any point it sees 
fit. The law fixes no standards, imposes no restrictions, and requires no regula- 
tion of any kind. There could be no appeal from the arbitrary decision of these 
men, who would be under constant pressure from their constituents to push prices 
as high as possible. * * * The bill is essentially a price-fixing bill, because 
in practical working the board must arrive in some way at the premium price 
which will be demanded from the American consumer, and it must fix these prices 
in the contracts at which it will authorize purchases by flour mills, packers, other 
manufacturers, and such cooperatives as may be used, for the board must formu- 
late a basis upon which the board will pay losses on the export of their surplus. 
4. Delegates power of Congress.— This legislation proposes, in effect, that Con- 
gress shall delegate to a Federal farm board, nominated by farmers, the power 
to fix and collect a tax, called an equalization fee, on certain products produced 
by those farmers. That certainly contemplates a remarkable delegation of the 
taxing power. * * * The amount of the equalization fees, the method of 
collection and. disposition of these great sums of money are to be determined by 
the board without any effective check or review from the Executive or Congress— 
a delegation of powers under which our form of Government can not continue. 
5. Wil not benefit farmer.—The chief objection to the bill is that it would not 
benefit the farmer. Whatever may be the temporary influence of arbitrary 
interference, no one can deny that in the long run prices will be governed by the 
law of supply and demand. To expect to increase prices and then to maintain 
them on a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase 
production while decreasing consumption, is to fly in the face of an economic 
law as well established as any law of nature. 
6. Administrative difficulties will wreck plan.—The administrative difficulties 
involved are sufficient to wreck the plan. No matter how simple an economic 
conception may be, its application on a large scale in the modern world is 
attended by infinite complexities and difficulties. The principle underlying this 
bill, whether fallacious or not, is simple and easy to state; but no one has out- 
lined in definite and detailed terms how the principle is to be carried out in 
practice. How can the board be expected to carry out after the enactment of 
the law what can not even be described prior to its passage? In the meanwhile, 
existing channels and methods of distribution and marketing must be seriously 
dislocated. 
7. Does not control sirplus.—The bill will not succeed in providing a practical 
method of controling the agricultural surplus, which lies at the heart of the whole 
problem. * * * Jt seeks merely to increase the prices paid by the consumer, 
with the inevitable result of stimulating production on the part of the farmer and 
decreasing consumption on the part of the public. It ignores the fact that 
production is curbed only by decreased, not increased, prices. In the end the 
equalization fee and the entire machinery provided by the bill under considera- 
tion will merely aggravate conditions which are the cause of the farmer’s present 
distress. 
8. Penalizes some farmers for benefit of others.—The bill would impose the 
burden of its support to a large degree upon farmers who would not benefit by it. 
* * * Jt is proposed to increase the price of corn and mill feed to American 
farmers, and therefore the costs to the dairy and cattle feeding industries whose 
products are omitted from the, bill. 
9. Will stimulate production.—The effect of this plan will be continuously to 
stimulate American production and to pile up inereasing surpluses bevond the 
world demand. * * * With such increased surpluses dumped from the 
United States on to foreign markets the world prices will be broken down and 
with them American prices upon which the premium is based will likewise be 
lowered to the point of complete disaster to Amercan farmers. It is impossible 
to see how this bill can work. 
RATAN—92[R—QFRE. PT ——— ©