774 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



commerce might be safely and cheaply handled; but the instant 

 that legislation is proposed that will unshackle the farmers and make 

 it possible for the tenants to become owners of farms, we are met with 

 a protest that the proposed legislation is class legislation, is uncon- 

 stitutional, and is contrary to the genius of our government. I take 

 it that not for long will this great and deserving class of citizens 

 submit to this unjust and unpartriotic treatment at the hands of its 

 legislative body. The farmer demands less at the hands of his govern- 

 ment and receives infinitely less than any other class of citizens. His 

 occupation in a measure isolates him. It teaches him to rely upon 

 his own resources; to meet and solve his own difficulties ; to fight his 

 own battles, and to do that single handed and alone. Therefore, he 

 has never banded himself together, as. other classes in this Republic 

 have, and beseeched in one voice in the halls of legislation that justice 

 might be done, and accordingly he has received nothing but faint 

 praise and much exploitation. 



In the Sixty-third Congress there was an opportunity to have 

 lifted from the farmers the burden they should not have borne in the 

 way of exorbitant interest rates. I supported this bill, but the efforts 

 of those who should have been the friends of the farmers were frittered 

 away in support of measures, some of which were good and some 

 wholly vicious, and each man wedded to his own idol, while those 

 opposed to legislation by lining up first with one group and then the 

 other to fight all measures defeated all measures. Whether the same 

 methods are to be pursued in this Congress is not yet apparent. 

 There are measures pending in Congress, some of those the same bills 

 that were introduced in the Sixty-third Congress, that if enacted into 

 law, or the principles engrafted upon the committee bill, would procure 

 for the farmer the full measure of relief that he is entitled to receive, 

 and we who are his friends in Congress are pledged that no legislation 

 not bearing these provisions shall be enacted into law by a vote of ours 

 nor shall they be enacted into law without our protest. 



The present Congress and our great President are about to redeem 

 the promise made at Baltimore in the new declaration of human rights. 

 Under the provisions of the present committee bill as it is being re- 

 drafted, and amendments added thereto, farmers will be enabled to 

 borrow money on a long-time repayment plan at a rate of interest 

 not in excess of 6 per cent, and possibly not greater than 5 per cent. 

 There are many provisions in this bill that my judgment does not 

 approve; however, in the main it stands for those things for which 



