PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 537 



demand market at prices that they would command in the market at the 

 present time. It would be nothing short of disaster if that were done. 

 But we have this condition still — a considerable number of persons who 

 obligated themselves for the purchase of land at high values; and that 

 did two things, it registered that value and committed them to that scale 

 of investment until they are repriced in a new sale, or until those lands 

 are beginning to pay out on that basis of valuation, and until that is done 

 we can not say that the agricultural industry has been liquidated. 



I might add to that a question of whether we are psychologically liqui- 

 dated. If we still think that land prices, after a short period of inaction, 

 are going to advance with the same rapidity that they did during the 

 war period, and to the same extent in the period before the war, I would 

 say that psychologically we are not liquidated. If we expect that prices, 

 now that they seem to have hit the bottom, prices not individually but 

 probably on the average, that they are going to show a marked improve- 

 ment, and that our woes are going to be solved from that direction, then 

 I would say that we are not liquidated. I think we have got to face a 

 period of several years of a long, steady, hard pull around that corner; 

 that we are perhaps rounding it as we pass from 1921 to 1922. I think 

 we have had some good counsel with reference to that today — with refer- 

 ence to the manner in which the agricultural industry of this state, which 

 is a long way from being solvent, is going to work out its own salvation, 

 and when I say that I don't mean that it will work itself back from de- 

 struction, but work itself back to a good position of prosperity, at the 

 same time maintaining the standards of living that we have set up for 

 corn belt agriculture. 



There are in that connection, I think, three points which might be well 

 observed, three general lines of activity by which the agriculture of this 

 state may reasonably expect to work out such a salvation. I don't know 

 what order one should put them in. In the shippers' convention, I sup- 

 pose that the question of marketing and particularly cooperative organi- 

 zation should be put first. Over here at the bankers' convention the 

 other day the question of finance was put first. Along in January, when 

 the Farm Bureau Federation meets, I suppose the federated forms of 

 agricultural organization will be put first. You can put them in any 

 order you like, but those are the three things which, it seems to me, may 

 well be thought of as the fundamentals in this brightening economic out- 

 look for agriculture. 



We have established during this period an organized movement and an 

 organized feeling among the farmers which, I think, is going to be a per- 

 manent asset to our agriculture in the future — the sane, substantial sort 

 of activities which have characterized the farmers' associations of this 

 state during the war; their unwillingness to embark in wildcat schemes 

 for improvement; their ability to work with other interests, with com- 

 mercial organizations. When I say "commercial organizations," I mean 

 in the main cooperative organizations for the marketing of farm prod- 

 ucts. And with financial organizations. In their legislative program 

 they have led the van for our warehouse bill, and various others; led the 

 van for better conditions which now may be worked out, not that have 



