TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 441 



pass on. This is the only practical plan which has occurred to my mind 

 of working this thing out of getting a short-term credit for the farmers. 



Now, if you want permissive legislation, as has been suggested, for 

 people who have no collateral, that is all right, but you cannot protect 

 safely a system of issuing credit unless there is security beneath the 

 thing. Some body suggested that a lot of fellows get together that had 

 no security, and let them organize themselves, and with that let the 

 federal government loan 100-million dollars to the states and the states 

 in turn loan the money to this aggregation of men without any security 

 whatever, and I said to him, "Well, that looks good, but it is not good 

 for this reason, the federal government won't do such a thing, and that's 

 enough." (Laughter.) The federal government ought not to do such a 

 thing, and that's enough in itself, for the reason that you cannot take 

 naught plus 100-million naughts and get anything but naught in arithmetic 

 — and I am not an arithmatician; but you can take actual values here in 

 the shape of produced crops, which represent the investment of brain 

 and brawn and capital, and with that as a basis we ought to be able to 

 do for the farmers of this country — let's put it the other way: The farm- 

 ers of this country ought to be able to do for themselves with a little gov- 

 ernment supervision what the great corporations of this country are doing 

 every day. (Applause.) 



And now, my fellow citizens, just one other thought. This cannot be 

 done, and many other great constructive things ahead of American agri- 

 culture cannot be done, except through the closest organization of the 

 American farmers themselves. It is a word much misused "co-operate," 

 "organize," and "get-together," but hasn't the time come, my countrymen, 

 when you see the necessity of putting your thought and your money and 

 your energy in the jackpot with your neighbors that all of you may save, 

 or else that each of you may hang separately? And you have got to do 

 this, too, my friends, under wise leadership. You cannot do it with 15- 

 cent heads; you have got to select the very best men that you can find in 

 your class, and then be willing to pay them enough salaries that if neces- 

 sary they can give up their own business to take care of yours. (Ap- 

 plause.) I like your Mr. Howard! He is an upstanding fellow; he has 

 got a keen eye; he has got a square jaw, and, more than that, he has 

 courage and common-sense— John R. Howard. (Great applause.) I like 

 Mr. Cunningham, and I like Mr. Hunt, and I like all of you who are mem- 

 bers of this organization — why, you're good-looking enough to make me 

 think I am talking to a South Carolina audience. (Laughter and ap- 

 plause.) And when you find that leadership, my friends, keep it, for this 

 reason — without it you are liable to fly off at a tangent, follow some will- 

 o'-the-wisp, listen to the cooing of strange doves; you are liable to get 

 your feet off the ground. You know, it is said that in his great wrestling 

 bout with his powerful opponent, whose name I cannot recall just now, 

 Hercules was in great danger of being defeated throughout the contest, 

 until finally he got a kind of head-lock on his opponent and got his feet 

 off the ground, and when he got his feet off the ground he was as helpless 

 as a babe and was conquered. 



