604 
AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
Mr. Menges. They could no longer make the cattle business pay, 
so they have changed from the cattle-raising business to the dairying 
business, and now they use these thermos-bottle cars. 1 use that 
name because I am not thoroughly familiar with the technical name 
of the car. But it is a car in which the product can be shipped 800 
miles or further with one refrigeration. They use those cars and they 
ship milk into the Philddelphia and New York markets for less than 
the New Yorker of the Pennsylvanian can produce it. 
Now, with your proposition how would you cope with that kind 
of a condition? 
Mr. Yoakum. That is the very objective of a regulated commodity. 
If they were operating under a Federal charter and properly organized, 
all of those difficulties would be overcome, the same as we have had 
in every other big economic question, and they would be worked out 
to the general good and interest of the farmer. You can not specif- 
ically work out those plans until you come in contact with them 
through a board that is authorized to control the situation and that 
would naturally go to each one of these great producing places or 
districts, and take up these questions and work them out on the 
same general principle that the Interstate Commerce Commission 
has worked out its many problems in the last 30 years. This is not 
a very likely proposition. 
Mr, MENGES. 1 believe in cooperation. I am heartily in favor of 
it. But that thing came under my observation only recently, and 1 
was wondering whether you could tell those West Virginians, “You 
quit producing milk and let Pennsylvania and New York farmers 
do that and charge the consumer more?” This question was not 
answered. 
Mr. Aswern. How is the price of steel handled? 
Mr. Yoakum. I have gone into that some. 
Mr. AsweLL. It is the same process? | 
Mr. Yoakum. If the Pennsylvania or the Baltimore & Ohio or any 
other railroad wanted to buy a hundred thousand tons of steel rail 
they would all get the same price. It is standardized prices; it is 
fixed prices; and that is what we want in agriculture. 
I do not want to take up your time, but it might be well for the 
committee to know that this is not a new subject to me, Mr. Chair- 
man, and it may not take me but a half minute. 
In 1910 I wrote an article published by the Saturday Evening 
Post, and this is one of the paragraphs [reading]: 
It is not the amount of potatoes, cabbages, onions, grain, dairy products, or 
other foodstuffs in a community of farmer producers that fatten their bank 
accounts. It is the price for which they can sell them. 
Now, that will always hold good. In that same connection, in 
1911, 17 years ago, I made a talk before the Agricultural College of 
Lincoln, at Lincoln, Nebr., in which I said [reading]: 
The growth of the organization of farmers will be the next important step in 
the development of the country. We will then have commercialized farming. 
That is just what we are trying to get, commercialized farming. 
That is what we want. 
In an address before the convention of the southwestern growers, 
at Dallas, Tex., October, 1912, I also said: 
_ The broad and comprehensive principles of the National Producers’ Associa- 
tion should not be misunderstood. Its basic principle should be to formulate