PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 509 



say: "We want to help here. Tell us what to do. We will stand behind 

 you in anything you want to do out there. Come out and size up that 

 situation. Show us where we can help. Everybody will get behind it." 

 That is true everywhere, true in the south, true all over the country. 

 There is a thoroughly sympathetic attitude on the part of big business of 

 all sorts toward agriculture, and it is a very hopeful thing. It is going to 

 result in bringing us together as a nation. It is going to put a stop to a 

 lot of this class prejudice which so often develops into class hatred. We 

 have come to see that if we are going to build a thoroughly well-rounded, 

 self-sustaining nation, it has to be by co-operation of the various large 

 groups in the nation instead of by quarreling between each other. And if 

 through this depression we have come through, and let me say to you that 

 business has suffered as well as agriculture; if through this terrible de- 

 pression, out of it comes that sort of spirit, that consideration for one 

 another, that sympathetic understanding of one another's troubles that 

 willingness to co-operate for the good of all, if that sort of spirit comes 

 out of it, it will not have been wholly bad — bad as it has been. 



Mr. Thome suggested that I talk to you a little about some of the 

 things that happened in Washington. I think I did that last year some. 

 We are coming now to the New Year's, and perhaps you would be inter- 

 ested in how New Year's is celebrated in Washington, or observed. 

 That is the time when the president and his wife always hold a great 

 reception. I remember our experience last year, the first one for us. 



At eleven o'clock the members of the cabinet and their wives go 

 down to the White House and pay their respects, or 11:30, to the presi- 

 dent and his wife, and at twelve o'clock the president and his wife take 

 a position in the Blue Room there, and the doors are opened and every- 

 body who wants to come and shake hands with the president and his 

 wife is free to come. They told us very kindly that after the first half 

 hour the members of the cabinet and our wives were free to go when we 

 pleased. We just stood around for a little while and watched the crowd. 

 We left about one o'clock. I took Mrs. Wallace home, and I went back 

 to the office and worked. I left the office at five o'clock, and when I 

 drove up past the White House, the crowd extended from the front door 

 of the White House two abreast, out through the White House grounds, 

 across in front of the State, War and Navy building, which is a long 

 block, and down the side of the State, War and Navy building for a dis- 

 tance of about two blocks. And that crowd had been going, with the ex- 

 ception of twenty minutes at noon, there had been that steady procession 

 from twelve o'clock noon until almost six o'clock that night. They 

 stopped people forming the line, I think, about five o'clock or a little be- 

 fore. They did not allow any others to get in line, but the president and 

 Mrs. Harding stood and shook hands with all of those who were in line 

 up to that time. 



Now you can understand something of the physical strain on the 

 president and his wife to do that sort of thing, to stand there and shake 

 hands with that continuous string of people. You know they found one 

 rather interesting thing. They got to timing the number of people that 

 passed in a minute, and then they found that if they speeded up the 



