Afternoon Session, Thursday, December 4, 1913, 2 o'Clock. 

 WiTHERSPOON Hall. 



Honorary Chairman, Antonio Sans, Esq., President, Commercial 

 Exchange. 



Mr. Sans: It is an honor, ladies and gentlemen, to preside tem- 

 porarily over this meeting. The honor is tantamount to the pleasurable 

 duty that I am to discharge. In the year 1912, from an acreage of 

 107,083,000 we raised 3,124,746,000 bushels of corn. If the same acreage 

 had been made to produce three bushels more to the acre it would have 

 given us over three bushels per capita of the population of our country. 



Agriculture is a subject which ought to be in the minds of every 

 citizen of this country. The present generation may not suffer, but our 

 posterity, unless we take means to increase the production and to edu- 

 cate the people who inhabit the cities in their development and growth, 

 will feel the pinch of poor crops. Our population increases at the rate of 

 over twenty million every decade. It will not be a very long period 

 before we shall have two hundred million inhabitants in this country, 

 instead of one hundred million, or nearly so, that we have today. Think 

 of it, gentlemen! What a subject this is! I think that it is paramount 

 to any that has come before the American people for many and many 

 a year. 



In the year 1909 there were landed in the port of Philadelphia about 

 twenty-five thousand immigrants. Of this number, but fifteen hundred 

 went to the country. The rest remained in Philadelphia. Think of it, 

 gentlemen! They remained so as to become consumers. We don't want 

 consumers. We want producers. We want to bring the producers to the 

 point where they can supply the consumers. The effort must be made, be 

 it strenuous or otherwise, to get these people who center in our cities to 

 go to the country, to farms. In order to do that, we must make farming 

 life more easy and pleasurable. There ought to be a movement started 

 to make the farmer comfortable on his own farm through means of enter- 

 tainment and means of libraries and other means that would make his 

 life an easier one. 



The gentlemen who have undertaken this corn show and conference 

 are entitled to our thanks. The present officials and board of directors 

 of the Corn Exchange National Bank are entitled to our sincere thanks 

 for having given momentum to the movement. 



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