AGRICULTURAL RELIEF 
I take pleasure in presenting Mr. Albert S. Goss, master of the 
Washington State Grange and member of the executive committee 
»f the National Grange. 
STATEMENT OF ALBERT S. GOSS, MASTER WASHINGTON STATE 
GRANGE AND MEMBER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, NATIONAL 
GRANGE. SEATTLE. WASH. 
Mr. Goss. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as Mr. 
Ketcham says, I come from the State of Washington. Mr. Taber 
told you yesterday something of the attitude of the grange. I can 
tell you of the attitude of the granges on the Pacific coast, where we 
are very strong in proportion to the number of farmers we have. 
Washington, Oregon, and Idaho Granges have indorsed this meas- 
ure practically by unanimous vote. I am not advised of the action of 
the California State Grange, since it met just prior to our national 
convention. But the chairman of the legislative committee of the 
California State Grange has attended our national convention and 
has been in Washington since, and has indorsed this program. So 
we feel that we can speak fairly accurately of the standing of the 
grange members and of the farmers on the Pacific coast. 
Mr. Taber pointed out that we did not claim this bill to be a cure- 
all by any means. It attacks just one phase of the question. We 
think that it is a sound solution for that phase of the question. 
There are other problems of agriculture. There are problems of 
transportation; there are problems of taxation; there are problems 
of distribution, which no bill can handle. We recognize that fully. 
But we fell in this measure that we hit at the fundamental cause of 
low prices, and in the interest of clear thinking I am going to ask 
you to review with me the trend of our agricultural development 
for the last hundred years or so. 
It is one hundred and thirty-odd years ago when Alexander 
Hamilton, making his report on manufactures to President Washing- 
ton, expressed this principle—I can not quote, will not attempt to 
quote, it in his language; but in just plain English it was that if 
we pursue a policy of protection by means of a protective tariff 
and other protective legislation, that the costs of our standards of 
living would all be raised and the costs of agricultural production 
would be raised, and that a well-rounded policy of protection should 
contemplate the protection of agriculture as well, with a system of 
export bounties, which he outlined. A speaker who will follow me 
will go into that more fully. I wanted to call your attention to 
the trend that agriculture took from that time on. 
Congress adopted the protective-tarift policy. It did not adopt the 
ther half of the tariff policy, the protection to agriculture; and it so 
happened that agriculture did not need it at that time; for shortly 
after that our population broke over the mountains down into the 
Ohio and the Mississippi Valleys, and there they found the most 
fertile farm lands in all the world, just ready to be plowed out, virgin 
soil; and under those conditions they produced the most bountiful 
crops ever produced in the history of the world at costs lower than 
any other place in the world, because of the virgin soil and just the 
2onditions under which the crops were raised, and agriculture did