the need for a permanent solution is just as pressing. No one blames the Government for crop failures, and elsewhere there is a happy conjuncture of high prices and excellent crops. Therefore we have a breathing space during which this great problem may be worked out in an amicable and equitable manner.

Out of the welter of investigation and debate there have gradually crystallized four principal programmes for agricultural relief: Diversification, Coöperative Marketing, Reduction of Transportation Costs and Effective Protection. The advocates of all four seem to agree that the crucial problem is one of increasing the net return to the producer, and to admit, therefore, that the principal trouble with agriculture, as it is practised today in the great food producing areas of the United States, is that it is unprofitable. Moreover, those who believe the answer is Diversification or Cooperative Marketing or Effective Protection appear to have come to the same conclusion, that it is the weight of the exportable surplus of the major food products on domestic markets which is the chief cause of this unprofitable character. Those who emphasize Diversification explain the difficulty as one of wrong apportionment of effort and find the remedy in a change in productive methods through individual action. Those who support Coöperative Marketing blame the marketing system and recommend a new plan of distribution brought about through voluntary group action. Those who favor Effective Protection believe the fundamental cause to be the Government's fiscal policy and propose a change in our political economy to be accomplished by political action.

There are some, of course, who believe that American agriculture is overdeveloped and should be compelled by economic pressure to contract its production within domestic requirements. They may safely be ignored. The United States has been, for over half a century, the great agricultural exporter of the world. We have, to a large extent, fed Europe, and half our exports have been, and still are, agricultural products. Has this great trade now become a crime? Suddenly to curtail the industry which has gradually laid the foundation of the economic life of America, would be as destructive as Bolshevism.

There is great merit in all four plans for relief. But only by a careful comparison of them is it possible to determine the natural

limitations of each and to demonstrate the relative benefits to be expected from them. Let us attempt to take their measure. The general programme of Diversification is the law of evolution of agriculture. But it can only be carried out as far and as fast as is permitted by the controlling factors of suitability of soil and climate, distance from and size of markets, accumulation of capital, acquisition of special knowledge and skill, and, finally, subject to the qualification that specialization pays best in agriculture as in every other activity. Diversification comes about by evolution, not by revolution. It is a slow process, because the producer of food can no more readily change his production at will than can the producer of industrial products, and because the markets for the new production must grow in order to absorb the growing supply. In an effort to force the movement the dairy industry has recently been swamped by a relatively small transfer of energy to that favorite field. And this points the defect in this plan as a speedy cure. Rapid change of production simply reduces itself to a transfer of the surplus from one line to another. It does not deal adequately with the surplus itself, which is inherent in our present ratio of food production to population. Nothing which does not relieve the domestic markets of the weight of this surplus, in whatever form it may exist, really meets the exigencies of the case.

Coöperative Marketing is a favorite panacea. Under good management it has been successful in the case of specialties which need to be exploited or which are suffering from inadequate or antiquated shipping and selling methods. It has been successful with the virtual monopolies, cotton and tobacco. And, where glutting of markets at harvest time has been indicated by a regular rise in the price curve, during the season of consumption, more rapid than the costs of carrying would justify, it has raised the average price to the producer. But none of these conditions exist in the case of wheat, corn, hogs and cattle, the four great staple food products of which the surplus consists, and therefore the nub of this question. Those who recommend Coöperative Marketing for these products seem to have faith in the power of such great selling organizations to manipulate prices in an open market. Yet all experience denies this possibility and predicts disaster for such attempts. Failing this there is a vague idea

that Coöperatives could relieve the home markets of the exportable surplus, thus permitting the tariff to be effective in raising prices. But this would compel the members of such voluntary organizations to shoulder the whole loss of selling the surplus at world prices while non-members would get the higher domestic price for their entire output. Such a penalty on membership would, of course, destroy the organization that attempted it. The remaining benefit that might be secured would be limited to the net profits of the present private dealers or to economies effected by more efficient management. The profits of the producer, therefore, could be enhanced by only a few cents per bushel or tenths of a cent per pound. And the problem of the surplus could not be met at all by this method.

The party which pins its hopes upon a reduction of transportation costs, consists, for the most part, of the usual groups who attack the railroads in season and out of season. There are also some conservative forces who propose the development of water transportation and, particularly, the connection of the Great Lakes with the ocean. It is undoubtedly true that transportation costs mean more to the farmer than to any other producer. He pays the freight both ways. He must deliver his product to the market in the centers of population, and his costs of production and living include the freight on all commodities brought to him from these same centers. By the nature of the case the farmer occupies the hinterland where distances are great, while industry naturally chooses the strategic points where transportation costs are lowest. The existing high rates rest upon a fabric of costs consisting, in the main, of a wage level established by a monopoly of labor in the absolute control of the Railroad Brotherhoods and the Railroad Unions. To break down this inflated level is a task from which even courageous political and railroad leaders shrink. Without such a liquidation, lowering of rates would result either in an insignificant saving to shippers or in bankruptcy for the railroads. And, even if the railroad problem were squarely met and fought out with the unions, the saving to the farmer, as in the case of Coöperatives, would be limited to a few cents per bushel or fractions of a cent per pound. In neither event would this plan have any effect upon the export surplus. It is, there

fore, entirely inadequate as a method of remedying this particular situation.

There is only one approach to the question which seems to the West to go to the root of the difficulty. Most of the leaders of agriculture and all the members of the Farm Bloc, backed by a great majority of the farmers themselves and many disinterested men of affairs, lay the blame for agricultural distress at the door of the Government's historic fiscal policy. They are united in asking Effective Protection. Agriculture has diagnosed its own trouble and prescribed its own remedy. All that is needed is to fill the prescription. And the prescription is a simple one. It is called the "Golden Rule", and it says to the East from the West "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The farmer believes in the Protective Tariff. He believes in it so thoroughly that he wishes to participate in its benefits. He has seen industry grow and prosper under the fostering care of this government policy. He knows that he is dependent upon the tariff for the very existence of his own dairy, sugar and wool industries. And now he wants his four great food staples included in the system. Nominally they are: Practically they are not. That Protection is ineffective in these cases is proved by the fact that domestic prices of these products are entirely subject to and on a level with world prices. While foreigners cannot rob the American producers of their home markets, the results are the same, since competition abroad is entirely effective in preventing Americans from securing at home prices corresponding to the general level obtaining in this protected market. To say that the tariff protects the farmers of the ranges and the wheat and corn belts is a mere sophistry. Nor is it, at present, sufficient to offer to remove the artificial aid given to industry by the tariff. Free Trade would involve deflation for industry, and the temporary depression of the farmer's domestic market. It would also place him under the necessity of paying off his debts in dollars which were worth more and were harder to get than those which were originally loaned to him. What he wants and needs is some measure of fixed, if temporary, inflation such as was accorded industry in 1921-at least until he is square with the world. Therefore the political attention of the West is

concentrated upon this one underlying difficulty. The others will be worked out by the farmers themselves. This one can only be dealt with by the Government. The demand is not for "relief"; it is only for justice.

After the sudden and disastrous deflation of 1920-21, the Republican Party leaped into the breach and brought immediate aid to industry and transportation. The Business Bloc was in the saddle. The Emergency and, later, the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Laws had an almost immediate effect in restoring the price levels of industrial products. It is estimated that this tariff has raised internal prices on manufactured goods and some raw materials about forty per cent., on an average, above the natural world level, and that it has permitted our manufacturers to control home markets in spite of their higher costs. The Immigration Law fortified the tariff while, at the same time, tending to give the benefit of both measures to labor. Whereas previous tariffs had relieved us from the competition of foreign labor working on its own shores, that same labor had been free to immigrate in large numbers and provide effective competition from within our borders. This kept down the wage scale, which is the principal element in the cost of manufacture. The 1921 laws shut out, not only the products of foreign labor but the labor itself, with the result that American wage scales were fixed at, or near, war levels, in spite of the general deflation in all unsheltered prices.

To succor the railroads Congress passed the Esch-Cummins Law, which had the effect of crystallizing the inflated costs of war times and the rates built upon them, and which, to a large extent, relieved the railroad managements and railroad labor from the necessity of deflation under which the rest of us have suffered.

These three measures were paternalistic; had a direct effect upon the prices of commodities or services produced by industry and transportation; and greatly aided these branches of our economic organization in a return to prosperity which had reached such proportions by the spring of 1923 that it needed to be deliberately checked by Federal Reserve policy. For agriculture little or nothing was done. The agricultural schedules of