CITY TRADE BODIES AND AGRICULTURE. 



C. L. Logan, 

 Secretary, Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, Binghamton, N. Y. 



There cannot be any doubt in the minds of men who have given the 

 question of agricultural conditions in the States any consideration as to 

 the advisibility of making an earnest attempt to improve those conditions 

 and to give the tillers of the soil every encouragement possible to make 

 their yields greater. 



We have here a problem which year by year takes on an increased 

 importance, for in it are bound up the prosperity, the happiness, the exist- 

 ence of our nation. The farm is truly , the basis of human life; all the vast 

 enterprises of men have their beginnings in the food which the soil supplies, 

 and progress is hampered or accelerated by the forces which decrease or 

 increase agricultural productiveness. 



History shows us again and again the truth that a nation's political 

 stability as well as its economic growth is founded upon its soil and the 

 use made of it. It is imperative that our people turn to the lessons of 

 history, study them carefully and seek for remedies to overcome them, for 

 as yet we have not learned to evade them. 



Men of vision, particularly those who have studied these lessons, see 

 the peril and warn against it. Guglielmo Ferrero, in a masterly study of 

 the Roman Empire's fall, points this parallel: ''In no country is this 

 condition more apparent than in the United States. What nation might 

 more easily be borne along by the marvelous abundance of its treasures? 

 It lacks neither territory, nor capital, nor labor. Yet in no country of 

 Europe are the wails over costliness so loud and so common as in the 

 United States. Why? Because in America the disproportion between 

 the progress of the fields and that of the cities, between that of industries 

 and that of agriculture, is still greater than in Europe." 



We have men and women of vision here in America, many of them, 

 who are studying these conditions and helping each in his or her small or 

 large way to solve them. I am not going to attempt to go over the field 

 and name any individuals, but wish to speak to you from the viewpoint 

 and activities of the city business man. The mere fact that you have 

 gathered here in Philadelphia to discuss these conditions shows an awaken- 

 ing on the part of your business man for the need of an intelligent co- 

 operation between the city man and his country brother in meeting the 

 problems of country life and an increasing interest in the possibilities of 



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