140 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 



said, "There is no agricultural problem in America." He said, "America 

 was not destined to be a great agricultural nation, it is destined to be the 

 greatest manufacturing and commercial nation the world has ever known 

 and not until your soil of the Mississippi valley and the soil of the great 

 South American empire is reduced to the same degree of depleted fertility 

 as the soil of the New England states will there ever be an agricultural 

 problem in America." Now that is an extreme statement, of course. Very 

 few people go to that length but it does voice to some degree the senti- 

 ment which a great mass of the population feel towards the farmer. They 

 consider that our function is to produce, produce largely and more largely 

 regardless of profit. I am not sure but what there are some reasons why 

 they should feel that way. As a nation we have had a policy for a number 

 of years of getting our new lands settled. A great deal of our government 

 revenue has come from the sale of these lands and the government through 

 its homesteading policy has promoted agricultural production and the 

 competition of the new lands has virtually put many of the older agricul- 

 tural sections out of the running so far as profit is concerned. But of 

 course that is past. 



The railroads have had much to do with the development of our agricul- 

 ture. With large government subsidies they have gone into new territories 

 to develop tonnage, for transportation always must precede the tonnage. 

 So I say that it is necessary that the nation as a whole realize that we 

 must act, that they must and we all must give a careful consideration to 

 the problems which affect us all. 



Just at this time we are overburdened with surpluses of some of our 

 crops, particularly corn. You people know as well as I that we would be 

 better off if we had less corn and more money and if we had less corn 

 we would have more money. The fact is we have 670 million bushels 

 more corn in America today than has been used in an average year of the 

 past ten years and 670 million bushels is one-fourth the normal com crop 

 of the United States. If you take the year of the greatest consumption of 

 corn, which was last year, we still have 370 million bushels more than dis- 

 appeared from the farms of America last year. And by disappearance I 

 mean that it was fed to live stock or that it was marketed. So we do have 

 a serious problem. 



Now I want to give you another little picture of the attitude of some 

 people toward this corn crop of ours. Russia is starving. Millions and 

 millions of people must perish unless relief soon comes. Our relief asso- 

 ciations have sent good and reliable men over there to canvass the situa- 

 tion. They came back with the recommendation that corn should be sent 

 to those starving Russians; that every community in Russia has its mill 

 and can take care of this corn and they addressed the President to ask 

 that Congress make an appropriation to buy 20 million bushels of these 

 670 million bushels of surplus to send to Russia. The President recom- 

 mended in his message the purchase of 10 million bushels. A bill was 

 introduced into Congress. I am just back from Washington and I want 

 to tell you that there is every possible effort being made by the New 

 England bloc in the House of Representatives to defeat that appropriation. 

 I don't think they are going to defeat it, but they don't want the govern- 



