554

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
The CuarrMAN. No tariff is paid on wheat shipped in bond. It
is shipped from Canada to Buffalo, and there they remove wheat
and substitute rye and ship out as wheat.

Mr. AxpERsON. If they do they violate the law. .

The CuairMAN. Unfortunately, they do.

Mr. AxpERSON. Then they ought to be prosecuted and put in jail.

The CuarrMAN. They ought to be prosecuted and the practice
done away with, and that is what we aim to do in this bill.

Mr. Jones. Mr. Anderson, I understood you to say awhile ago
that you did not think there was. any way by which the price of the
farm products might. be artificially increased to anything like the
status of manufactured products—no plan that is practicable and
workable that would do that.

Mr. ANDERSON. No, I did not go that far, Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones. I thought you did. I understood that you did, and I
was going to ask you if you did not, according to your theory, think
that the tariff artificially stimulates the price of certain manufactured
products as a more or less permanent proposition?

Mr. ANDERSON. With the words “more or less” in there, yes.

Mr. Jones. That is, it does so far as the manufacturer himself is
concerned and so far as the articles which are manufactured is
concerned it gives him a higher price in the domestic market over a
period of years than he would get but for the tariff, does it not?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. Jones. Regardless of the merits of this, if any plan can be
conceived that would make the same rules of exclusion. and similar
rules of commercial activity apply to farm products, the same result
might be achieved as for the manufactured products, might it not?

Mr. AnpErsoN. I think that is theoretically possible.

Mr. Jones. It would be possible if a practical plan could be worked
out. There is not any reason why if you could lift the surplus up and
dispose of it and thus create a condition here which now exists with
reference to certain manufactured products, the same condition might
be made to apply.

Mr. ANpERSON. None of us believe, I think, that the tariff works
100 per cent perfectly on any commodity.

Mr. Jones. Very true.

Mr. ANDERSON. It does not work at all on flour.

Mr. Jones. That is probably true, because of the drawback pro-
visions.

Mr. AnpErsoN. No; it is true because competition practically
keeps the flour price on a level with your wheat price.

Mr. Jones. I thought on that question of competition you were
saying awhile ago if your organization were to make a contract under
this or any other bill it would insist on certain conditions. If you
had competition you would have to make the best contract you
could in the event this bill went into effect.

Mr. AnpErsoN. That was the limitation which I wanted to make
with Mr. Ketcham, that the probabilities are that there would be
competition among mills for these contracts, and that that competi-
tion would probably prevent the realization, or might prevent the
realization of either the entire recoupment of losses and probably
ald] zosul in no recoupment of profits in those transactions. so far

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