162 FARMERS' UNION AND FEDERATION. 



12. The government will leave the wheat growers to the 

 mercy of profiteers and gamblers after June 1, 1920, and they 

 will sell the price down to probably 60 cents, as they did in 

 1914 when the growers have a crop ready for market. Wheat 

 raisers have until then to unionize and prepare to take over 

 the pricing of their wheat, and they have no time to waste. 

 But should the government continue pricing the wheat it 

 would still be necessary to unionize to have competent and 

 authorized representatives to inform the government what 

 the price should be and to insist on it being adopted. 



13. Prices of nothing, except some other farm products, 

 would follow wheat down. Union labor has declared it will 

 not allow their wages lowered regardless of lower prices on 

 anything else. Mr. Hoover has stated that to reduce flour 

 prices fifty per cent would not cause more than one or two 

 cents reduction in the price of a pound loaf of bread. Here 

 is a couple of excerpts from Mr. Hoover's statement dated 

 at Paris, March 10, 1919 : 



"The needs of Europe are larger than our previous estimates. Alto- 

 gether the balance of the supply and demand for our present wheat 

 now looks as though we might see wheat at $3.50 a bushel as it was in 

 the spring of 1917, if there is a free market in wheat and uncontrolled 

 prices for the 1918 crop. There can be no free market of ninety per 

 cent of the world's exports. Wheat is controlled by the wheat ex- 

 ecutive in London. 



"Therefore to all present appearances it should be possible to market 

 the whole of next year's crop without loss to the government. 



"As to whether the government will deliberately take a loss below 

 the price of $2.25 a bushel in order to lower the price of bread is a mat- 

 ter that will have to be determined by the officials of the day. It 

 appears to me that the world price of wheat, if there is a free market, 

 may be above $2.25, and in any event, such a loss would be a direct 

 subtraction from bread prices just as it is paid now in European coun- 

 tries. 



"There are very great technical difficulties in the way of such pro- 

 cedure in the United States. Furthermore it would, I believe, be proved 

 upon investigation that to lower the price of flour by fifty per cent 



