574 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



reached that is worth while until the farmer and the laborer work in 

 harmony and not against each other, because to set them against each 

 other has been continually attempted from the beginning of time. We 

 have got to come to the time when farmer and laborer are esteemed 

 higher. If the farmers and the laborers of this country would cooperate 

 in the true spirit, taking advantage of new methods of protection, they 

 would rule this country. And when rates of interest are going to be 

 guaranteed for anybody by congress, those rates of interest should be 

 arranged with some reference to the returns from our farms. Now, I 

 don't believe In every radical movement that is proposed in the name 

 of farmer and laborer; I don't believe in all of the harebrained schemes 

 raised by men in excited times, but I want to say to you that the soldier 

 will come back home and be neglected and left to die, the labor of this 

 country will labor as a peasant class for wages merely enough to sup- 

 port life, and the farmer will produce food on the unpaid labor of his own 

 family, so long as they are willing to accept the position they endured 

 in the middle ages and have held ever since and are at the present time 

 holding in every country in the world, except this. All societies are 

 built on a peasant class at the bottom, and, gentlemen, you know the 

 prospect today in the United States is that we are going to come to the 

 peasant farmer class — the actual tiller of the soil. I want to say to you 

 gentlemen that we have got to take large views of the future of Ameri- 

 can democracy, and we have got to stand together to see that those who 

 do the actual work of the world at least receive a living wage. I am in 

 favor of paying a bonus to the soldier boys. Two years of their time 

 they spent working for their board and clothes, and it has taken them 

 more than two years to become readjusted, and many of them are inca- 

 pacitated. I heard yesterday that there are thousands of the boys who 

 were gassed in the war out of employment and out of food, and it is re- 

 ported that Colonel Whittlesey committed suicide because of worry on 

 his part over the pitiful condition of many of his former soldiers. We 

 said when the boys went away that if we failed to win, life and property 

 would be worth nothing, and the boys won, and life and property were 

 secure. They were told it was their duty, and they were glad to do it. 

 That was always said. It used to be said that soldiers must fight for 

 nothing to maintain the prince; labor must be for nothing; farm produc- 

 tion must be for nothing. I don't want to inject a radical note into this 

 meeting, but, gentlemen, there would have been no such deflation in 

 market prices as took place; there would have been no such smash in 

 prices in this country by withdrawing credit as took place if the farmers 

 had been paying as much attention to the business end as to the polit- 

 ical end as some other classes of this country are. George E. Roberts, 

 the financial writer of the National City Bank of New York, one of the 

 most conservative authorities in this country, states that we shrank 

 farm products $7,000,000,000 in one fell shrink. If we had extended 

 credit to Europe to be expended in farm products, we would have not 

 only held prices and stimulated business, but kept our people employed, 

 and even if we had never gotten back the $7,000,000,000 that was loaned, 

 we would have been better off than we are today. Mr. Barron declared 



