PART 9.

SOLDIERS' ADJUSTED COMPENSATION.

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

Washington, D. C., Friday, March 12, 1920.

The committee assembled at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. Joseph W. Fordney (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. White, the committee will be glad to hear you now.

STATEMENT OF HON. HAYS B. WHITE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF KANSAS.

Mr. WHITE. I doubt, Mr. Chairman, if there is really much utility in my appearing here and taking the time of the committee. I will probably present my statements in a rather desultory manner, having made no preparation, excepting in a general way.

I do not care, Mr. Chairman, to discuss the details of the Morgan bill, or the Mondell bill, or the details of any bonus proposition. But I would like to present a few suggestions on subjects which are nearly bound up in this subject of soldier settlement that appear to me to be of such importance that they should receive the careful consideration not only of the committee but of the House.

I suppose, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that you have listened to a good many long speeches; and I think you will be delighted with the shortness of my statement; I think I can complete it in 10 or 15 minutes-I know this announcement will be very gratifying to the committee.

I have heard speeches of Members of the House, gentlemen appearing before this committee and various other committees, and I have read, not in some old, "marvelous tale, some legend strange and vague," but in the public prints of the day-and this may seem a digression, but you will pardon me; it will go into my time-that the farmer is a great and good man; that the farmer is the spinal column, the backbone, of this country.

I am pleased to hear this; and were I a less modest man, I might become "chesty." You will pardon one personal allusion; and then I will direct my remarks to the subject.

I came here, gentlemen, with the idea that I was the only real farmer in this Congress and I probably looked it. [Laughter.] And after I came here I heard that there were many other farmers; and I looked them over; and I will just tell you a little story and you may draw your own conclusions: I heard it once narrated that a gentleman from one of the Eastern States went out into the West

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to rusticate, and he got into a lumber camp, and in circulating around during the day he interviewed 29 men, and it developed in each instance that the man he was talking to was a graduate of Harvard College. He was very much surprised to find so many Harvard graduates out there; and in the evening he went into the cook shack to get a bite to eat. And said to the cook, "There is a surprising number of Harvard men in these diggings; I have talked to 29 men to-day, and they are all graduates of Harvard College." And the cook said to him, "Stranger, they are all liars; I am the only graduate of Harvard in these diggings." [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, you hear all of this talk about "back to the farm.” I took a position in opposition to the Mondell bill. I think the purposes of the bill are very beneficent: I have no prejudice against it. opposed the bill because of its inadequacy, because I did not think it would solve the problem; and also for another reason.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, we have about 4,000,000 ex-soldiers. It is claimed by the proponents of the Mondell bill, or, as it is designated, the Lane-Mondell bill, that it would be adequate. But its provisions would only be available to probably 100,000, or only about 1 in 40 of the soldiers. That is a proposition that will confront the committee and the House; it is a weakness in the Mondell bill; and the question will have to be answered; it will be raised.

I am not favorable to it for another reason: I believe that the provisions for its operations are sound, so far as they apply to the Western section of the United States, to projects where it would be requisite and imperative that we should employ irrigation.

But, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, from my viewpoint, my observation and experience, the individual soldier is a better business man than the Government of the United States, in the domain of his own individual interest.

I stated on the floor of the House, in substance, and I state here, that it is my candid judgment, and I believe it is the judgment of 9 business men out of 10, that the individual soldier is a better judge of a practical business proposition-that judgment reinforced by the counsel and advice of those who are directly interested in him and that judgment directed to a concrete proposition with which he and his friends are familiar-that soldier, making his investment with those precedent opportunities for investigation and sound conclusion, is a better prospect for success and is also a better risk for the Government of the United States.

That is my fundamental proposition, gentlemen. I will be pleased to follow this line of thought a little further and say to you that, in the States of Pennsylvania and New York, and the other Central and Southern States, there are thousands of opportunities for individual investment, for the purchase of small tracts. As was stated by Mr. Mondell in the few brief moments that I listened to him the other day, many opportunities have been passed over.

Gentlemen, there is this that may be stated: I do not wish to arouse any controversy, but I think it is true to say that the reason so many farms were abandoned in the past in the eastern section of the United States is to be found in the fact that, subsequent to the Civil War, through the homestead act and the building of railroads, which at that time was stimulated through Government aid and through the

competition of competing lines, etc., the great West was opened up and the prices of agricultural products declined until the condition developed that the East-the States of Pennsylvania, New York, and the New England States-could not compete with the great West.

Twenty-five years ago we were producing from 500 millions to 700 millions of wheat annually, almost as much as now, with a population of about half what we have now. And what we could not consume we sold in the markets of the world, which is always a precarious market, because we were competing with all the producers in the world.

That explains to my mind, gentlemen, and I have always so understood it, the reason for the decadence of agriculture in the Eastern section of the United States.

I contend that there are thousands and tens of thousands of opportunities for the individual to act upon his own judgment and inclination, reinforced by the judgment and counsel of those who are interested in him, where agriculture is a demonstrated success, to profitably make these investments. And I say to you that a man's home is the middle of the world; you all know the strength of the early tie. I will not enlarge upon that subject.

A man is not a farmer in a day, any more than a man is a scholar in a day. It has only been said once in the tides of time, as I have read it, and of but one man in all the history of the world, "How knoweth this Man letters having never learned?" And you may talk about congested population in the cities and about getting those people back to the farm.

There are one or two plain statements that I want to make; and if they are questioned I will not elucidate them:

The first is that farm products are the cheapest things in the United States to-day; that food in the first state, when it leaves the farm, is the cheapest necessity to-day that the American people must have in order to exist and get along.

You talk about stimulating agriculture. That is all right; it has been stimulated; it will continue to be stimulated. And our agriculturists are as progressive, keen, observant a class of business men as there are in the United States to-day. I have been doing business with them for many years, and I know it is as true of the farmer as it is of any man in the United States, that it takes two to make a bargain. Try to get anything of him and you will find that out. I could have made a million dollars if I could have made my bargains with the farmer as I wanted to make them, but I could not do it. I have been speaking as a farmer; I never did anything in my life but farm and run for things.

Gentlemen, you can not take those people out of the cities and make farmers out of them, because they have never learned the business; they do not know how to farm. It is an education that comes through years of experience and environment. Once in a while it is done; but those are exceptions that prove the rule.

Now, gentlemen, as to the Morgan bill. I can follow this line of reasoning further, but I agreed to take only 10 minutes.

I believe that the financial plan of the Morgan bill is reasonably sound. And I will tell you why: I believe those boys will make good. They are all young men; they have got the stuff in them;

they made good at St. Mihiel and in the Argonne. They have made. good whenever it was necessary for them to make good-in every instance.

Now, gentlemen will say you make a special class of them; that is a proposition that goes without saying; everybody knows that; that is the intention. And the long loan is the safe loan.

Every business man here knows that there are many elements that enter into the question of credit. It was stated by Mr. Morgan, I think it was brought out on interrogation-that the bank that lost the most might make the most money-the banker that took chances. Now, gentlemen, there will be losses. Soldiers on the average are as other men. But I say, gentlemen, that many a man has been in debt more than he is worth, and has made good—many and many a man. And many a man's note is better without security than another man's note is with all the security that he can assemble. And these things must be considered.

I think the Morgan bill has this good feature, that it provides for the purchase of urban homes. We hear a great deal about the distribution of property and the distribution of land. That is not an imperative policy that confront the United States to-day; but it was one of the results of the French Revolution; it came subsequent to that bloody period. England has wisely anticipated any trouble and has neutralized any prospect of it by taking this matter up, and thus accomplishing by legislation that which has been accomplished in other instances by revolution. They have done the same thing in Ireland. We are moving along gradually to that consummation; but I believe it will work itself out naturally, without any great upheaval or great disturbance-and it is now working itself out.

But you still have this fatal defect, I fear, in any of these propositions, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that by the admission of the proponents of the Mondell bill a mere one-fortieth of the soldiers could avail themselves of its provisions. You have what I fear is a weakness in the Morgan bill, that no proposition has been presented for those who may not wish to avail themselves, or who may not be in a position to avail themselves, of its provisions.

And I have nothing to offer you gentlemen. But here is the situation: If this committee shall report, or if the House shall pass, a bill that will involve the expenditure of $1,000,000,000, some committee of the House and some financial agency, must provide the means. I am not going into that. I am not making any suggestions, except to say, gentlemen, that the Morgan bill proposes to capitalize through a corporation, as has been carefully explained to you by Mr. Morgan, through the sale of bonds, the capital necessary to carry out its provisions and I believe his plan is absolutely sound. I believe it is workable. I am not as enthusiastic as Mr. Morgan, but I make this statement that individuality should be preserved. I do not believe the Government of the United States is competent to manage those schemes, nor do I believe that our finances are in a condition where we can do it and reclaim those lands, and then sell them to the soldier. I do not believe that the soldier would have a chance anywhere comparable with the chance he will have if he is allowed to proceed upon his own initiative. I want to make that