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