268 DEEP FURROWS 



" You have a very clear-cut and distinct responsibility 

 in supporting the whole movement of the organized 

 farmers in Western Canada; for this means that you 

 are improving not alone your own environment and 

 condition, but also creating the conditions and influ- 

 ences that will develop a higher and purer ideal of 

 public service upon the part of our people than we have 

 in Canada to-day. It should be a source of great 

 satisfaction that upon all important matters the 

 policies adopted and supported by the organized 

 farmers in the past have been formed upon what in 

 their judgment would benefit the country as a whole 

 and not from the narrow view of selfish interest. 



"During the past ten years the people of Canada 

 have mortgaged the prosperity of the future to far too 

 great an extent. Our total borrowings as a nation, for 

 public and private purposes, have run into such a 

 colossal sum that it requires about |160,(iOO,000 

 annually to pay interest on the amounts borrowed. 

 This constitutes a very heavy task on a country with 

 about eight millions of a population. Manufacturing 

 industries have been built up with a view of developing 

 home industry and furnishing home markets, but often 

 at a very heavy cost to our agricultural development, 

 with the result that we have been travelling in a circle, 

 reaching nowhere, rather than along the road that 

 leads to Progress. 



" We hear considerable nowadays of the necessity of 

 a ' Back to the Land ' movement. It is necessary, how- 

 ever, to do a little more than get people located on the 

 land with a view of increasing agricultural production. 

 It is necessary to free agriculture from the burdens 

 now resting upon it and make it the first business of 

 the country. 



