Agricultural relief: Agricultural relief

Bibliographic data

Multivolume work

Identifikator:: 1831932415

Document type:: Multivolume work

Title:: Agricultural relief

Place of publication:: Washington

Publisher:: Gov. Pr. Off.

Year of publication:: 1928

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Volume

Identifikator:: 1831932598

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-232069

Document type:: Volume

Title:: Agricultural relief

Volume count:: Pt. 1

Place of publication:: Washington

Publisher:: Gov. Pr. Off.

Year of publication:: 1928

Scope:: III, 69 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Statement of Chester H. Gray, Washington representative of the American Farm Bureau Federation

Collection:: Economics Books

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF underconsumption ; anyhow, it left a large part of the cotton unsalable. In former times the farm relief bills were presented merely from an emergency point of view, of trying to solve a temporary condition; now, any farm relief bill introduced—I do not care on what feature it may be founded, nor what method it may seek to use in trying to solve the surplus question—can not approach the farm relief question from an emergency or temporary point of view. At least, those organizations which President Thompson read the names of awhile ago, all of which are in support of H. R. 7940, have gotten far beyond the point that farm relief, as originally considered, is an emergency soiution. We are trying to set up a permanent agricultural policy for the disposition of the surplus. We are on a permanent basis now and have been for some time in the past. Farm relief has progressed from a point of simply making an effort to solve a temporary condition to an effort to set up a permanent beneficial condition, as to agriculture; and that gives the question a much more potent and much more favorable situation than perhaps it had in times past. Another point of progress which has been made in farm relief is that we are somewhat unconcerned now—at least, these organiza- tions, the names of which were read a while ago, are unconcerned about the size of the revolving fund. We are not so much concerned about that, provided it is not too radically low or too elaborately large. Any average-sized revolving fund is satisfactory to us, and we are not caring particularly to designate what that amount shall be, for this reason, that when the bill which we are advocating is passed, the revolving fund is merely a loan to agriculture for use by the Federal Farm Board in disposing of the surplus, and the loan shall carry 4 per cent interest. As it 1s a loan, with the stabilization fund being built up by the equalization fee on the commodity, not on the producer, it is immaterial, with the qualifications I have just ex- pressed, whether the revolving fund is large or small. The fund coming from the Federal Treasury as a loan and being used in the operation periods, being guaranteed and safeguarded and protected by the stabilization fund, will go back into the Treasury eventually at 4 per cent interest and be what its name designates it to be, a revolving fund. In some former efforts at farm relief bills, going back two or three years, the revolving fund was not a revolving fund in a direct appli- cation of that definition. It was a gift; it was a gratuity to agricul- ture with no method, in most farm relief bills, for returning that fund to the Federal Treasury from which it came, much less returning it with 4 per cent interest. We, in the group whose names you heard read awhile ago, are not asking for any gratuity from the Federal Government; we are not asking that Uncle Sam be a sort of Santa Claus, if I may so colloquially express it, to help out in the dispo- sition of surpluses; but, as we see it, we are asking the Federal Gov- ernment to provide the initiatory money, under the name of a re- volving fund, and to get that money back eventually with interest thereon. That is progress. To use the word I first used, it is evolu- tion. It is beneficial progress, and when I use those words, I am not applying them merely to those bills which have been based upon the equalization plan; but I am applying them to all farm relief bills. There 1s quite a difference between those bills which are based upon

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Agricultural relief (Pt. 1)

Multivolume work

Volume

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Volume

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation