498 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



to emphasize this point, that borrowing more money will not lift us out of 

 this financial quagmire, and until some plant is evolved that will provide 

 a market for our products at a price that will give us cost of production, 

 plus a reasonable profit, we can not hope to see any substantial improve- 

 ment in conditions, and I still maintain that it is the duty of our govern- 

 ment to see to it that such markets are provided for. 



Digressing just a moment from the printed address, I just wish to say 

 that personally I feel this way, men: It is all right for us to borrow 

 money; it is all rig'ht for this government to provide money that may be 

 made available to us as farmers and stockmen, to a certain extent, but 

 we can never borrow ourselves out of debt. That money has got to be 

 paid some time. You know that just as well as I do, and this thing of 

 expecting that the producers of this country can pay these debts, whether 

 we owe it to the government or whether we owe it to our bankers, under 

 existing physical conditions is a physical impossibility. We never can 

 do it as a people, and there is no use talking about it — we may prolong 

 the agony and we may postpone the final day of reckoning, but we can 

 not, unless there is something done to advance the price of the products 

 of the soil and our live stock — I can not see how in the world we are ever 

 going to meet these obligations in the future. I think this is a commend- 

 able act on the part of our government, furnishing this money, and I 

 wouldn't wish to appear in any other light, so far as that is concerned, 

 but it is not something that is going to relieve us unless along with that 

 comes an increase in the prices of our products, so that we have some 

 hope in the future of meeting these obligations when they shall become 

 due. 



Change in Federal Reserve Board 



Many and bitter have been the criticisms of the Federal Reserve Board 

 for bringing about this sudden and vicious defiation in prices, and at the 

 same time advancing the rate of loans. No doubt much of this has been 

 justified, and some has not, but there is no use crying over spilled milk or 

 further abusing the Federal Reserve Board. 



The thing that we must now see to as farmers and feeders is that the 

 Federal Reserve act is amended by the present congress, so as to place 

 upon that board the Secretary of Agriculture and a sufficient number of 

 members who are practical farmers and thoroughly familiar with agricul- 

 tural conditions to protect our interests and -to see to it that agriculture 

 and the tillers of the soil as well as Wall Street are consulted in the future 

 in the working out of the plans and program of the Federal Reserve Board. 



It is a lamentable fact that the board as now constituted is made up of 

 men representing great banking and financial interests and that they are 

 neither familiar nor in sympathy with agriculture and its needs, and it 

 seems to us that the chief functions of the Federal Reserve Board have 

 been to make money, and pile up millions in reserve in the east, and thus 

 make money tighter and more difficult to obtain by the western farmer. 



This then being true, let me urge you to set about at once in a deter- 

 mined manner to have this act properly amended, so as to protect your 

 interests in the future. 



