38 
AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
right next December to come back to Congress and make the fight 
for what we consider is vital to the maintenance of this proposition. 
Now, I want to submit to you, as representing these organizations, 
if we are not in better shape to do that with the fundamental idea 
established, with two of the essentials in it, to go before the country? 
We will not lose all this $400,000,000. We can not lose it all in that 
time, and if it does what we all hope it will do—bring agriculture on 
a level with other activities—next December we will not have very 
much trouble putting on a proposition to let the farmers maintain it 
themselves. 
Mr. KincaELOE. What is your question? 
Mr. FuLumer. May I add right there that in the meantime we 
will elect a Democratic President? 
Mr. Apkins. Now we are up against a practical legislative propo- 
sition here which is not what I would like. I am on record for every- 
thing you have said here, and propose to fight for it, but we are up 
against a practical proposition that if we can not get this—and we 
have every assurance, so far as assurances go, from leaders that are 
close to the President (and I am not)—that such a bill would be signed, 
if the country is not better off and if the farmer is not better off, and 
if we have a chance to demonstrate what surplus control will do, if 
we have not got a better chance to have the bill signed to go over 
on the floor and pass the bill and have it signed—if that would not 
be better for the country than to pass a bill and have it vetoed. I 
want to know if you do not think we would be better off than to go 
back without anything. 
Mr. Gray. No. 
Mr. Apxins. We would not? 
Mr. Gray. We would not be better off because, under those 
conditions that you have set up in that question, the bill, if it is to be 
passed emasculated as you suggest, could not contain any guarantee 
that it was going to be corrected in a subsequent Congress. 
Mr. Wirriams of Illinois. And we would be better off without 
anything? 
Mr. Gray. If the bill went through the Congress just setting up a 
Federal farm board, as Doctor Atkeson, former representative of 
the Grange describes it, an organization with nothing to do, and 
you would go before the people of the country on that kind of a bill, 
and you would get approval on it, then why should Congress amend 
It when approval had been given in a congressional campaign. We 
want a bill which has the fundamentals of permanent agriculture in it, 
not some temporizing emergency situation, or some foolish thing, as 
you suggest. We want a bill that has meat in it, or to use a rougher 
expression, that has guts in it. 
Mr. Apxins. In other words, if we can not get the bill as suggested 
by your organization, with the equalization fee in it, your judement 
is that we had better not have anything? ’ 
Mr. Gray. That - would be our judgment. 
Mr. Apkins. That is what I want to know. 
Mr. Jones. Let me ask just this one question. 
You suggest a further addition here, and in that addition you say 
that if the cooperative associations are unwilling to try the loan 
feature—and you say they probably will not be willing to try it— 
then if they are not willing to try it your additional provision does not,