Supreme Court has said is reserved to 

 '.he states. 



There is an unbroken line of prec- 

 edents to back up the right of the 

 central government to make such con- 

 ditional grants, which include the 

 grants to Land Grant Colleges, for Ex- 

 tension work, for Vocational Educa- 

 tion, for experimental work in the field 

 of agricultural production: grants to 

 the states for highway construction and 

 for many other purposes. And while I 

 am on that point, let me state my be- 

 lief that the Land Grant Colleges in 

 the states, acting in cooperation with 

 associations of producers such as have 

 developed under the Agricultural Ad- 

 justment Act, and with other state 

 agencies concerned with agriculture, 

 are the ready-made appropriate 

 agencies through which the states 

 should act. I do not mean by this that 

 the Administration plans to set up 48 

 little AAAs, for there is no such in- 

 tention. Terms on which grants of 

 money would be made to the states 

 would be announced and the state 

 could set up agencies to carry out 

 these conditions. They might enter in- 

 to contracts with producers and even 

 enact measures which would penalize 

 producers failing to cooperate. 



I am happy to say that the principles 

 of the pending legislation are in foim 

 and purpose substantially identical 

 with those recently proposed by your 

 own great agricultural leader and 

 friend, former Governor Frank O. 

 Lowden of Illinois. 



Recognizing that it will take time 

 for the states to act, the bill provides 

 that the Department of Agriculture 

 may, for a period not to extend beyond 

 December 31, 1937, make conditional 

 payments or grants to individual farm- 

 ers who have, by voluntary compliance 

 with conditions to be announced in ad- 

 vance by the Department shifted land 

 from intensive over-cropping to uses 

 that conserve and build up the soil. 



During the temporary period pre- 

 ceding state action, the Federal Gov- 

 ernment is not authorized to make con- 

 tracts with individual farmers as it has 

 done in the past. The distinction be- 

 tween conditional payments and con- 

 tracts, is drawn by the Court in lan- 

 guage used by Justice Roberts himself 

 when he said: 



"We are not here concerned with 

 a conditional appropriation of 

 money, nor with a provision (hat if 

 certain conditions are not com- 

 plied with the appropriation shall 

 no longer be available. By the 

 Agricultural Adjustment Act the 

 amount of the tax is appropriated 

 to be expended only in payment 



under contracts whereby the 

 parties bind themselves to regula- 

 tion by the federal government. 

 There is an obvious difference be- 

 tween a statute stating the condi- 

 tions upon which moneys shall be 

 expended and one effective only 

 upon assumption of a contractual 

 obligation to submit to a regulation 

 which otherwise could not be en- 

 forced." 



You may have doubts as to whether 

 states will cooperate vnth uniformity 

 and effectiveness. I believe they will. 

 The principle is the same as that which 

 has worked with individual -farmers. 

 One farmer, and one state, acting alone, 

 cannot afford to make the adjustments 

 that are required for the good of all, 

 unless there is some economic equal- 

 izer, either a penalty, or a reward, to 

 make a course not only desirable for 

 the welfare of the whole country, but 

 profitable and satisfactory from the 

 immediate economic standpoint. Then, 

 too. I have great faith in the force and 

 power of farmers acting together, when 

 applied either to state action or to 

 federal action. 



Perhaps there is some better way 

 that squares with the recent decision 

 of the Court. I confess I do not know 

 it if there is. But the coming year will 

 provide an opportunity to develop the 

 way, if it exists. 



The decision of the Court may seem 

 to bar the way, and it may force the 

 choice of other roads; but the farmers 

 of America are going to march forward 

 shoulder to shoulder toward their goal 

 of a fair, and a permanent national pol- 



CONGRESSMAN 

 MARVIN 

 JONES 



"We are going 

 forward just the 

 same, a way icill 

 be found." 



icy toward agriculture. More than a 

 decade ago you hoisted the banner of 

 "Equality for Agriculture" and you 

 have not hauled it down. 



Let me in conclusion, drive home 

 two points which to my mind, must be 

 fundamental in our thinking: .'.!.'' 



First, ever since the war we have 

 fought to establish the principle that 

 agricultural income, farm purchasing 

 power,' are a matter of national con- 

 cern — and are for the general welfare 

 of this nation. Let us not, for one mo- 

 ment, surrender that principle. 



Second, as long as the interests and 

 corporations that produce the goods 

 and services which farmers must buy, 

 follow the practice of controlling their 

 production and maintaining their price, 

 even though factories are held idle, 

 and millions of workmen plowed out 

 on the street, and to the relief rolls — 

 as long as that practice is sanctioned in 

 our economic system, just so long must 

 farmers battle for an effective, equiva- 

 lent power — equality for agriculture is* 

 meaningless without it. 



There are barriers to surmount; the 

 fight may take years. But I have faith 

 that the genius of America, the lead- 

 ership among our farmers, can hew out 

 the fundamentals of an American ag- 

 ricultural policy that will work fairly 

 in our system and that it can be hoisted 

 high and dry above political partisan 

 debate and the attack of special inter- 

 ests. And nothing has served to 

 strengthen that conviction more than 

 this opportunity to meet, face to face, 

 with this great organization of the 

 great state of Illinois. 



FEBRUARY, 1936 



