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a criticism, but as my good friend, George R. James, of Memphis, says: "We 

 came right back from the war with a pair of goggles over our eyes; over 

 one eye was the dollar sign, and over the other eye was the personal pro- 

 noun 'I.' How many dollars can I make as quickly as possible in order to 

 give me what I apparently lost in the war?" 



We did not realize what such a program would do to America. Our 

 business depends upon our nation; our business depends upon our commun- 

 ity, and depends upon the human side, or the welfare of the people. It took 

 three years of the great strain on our nation to practically break the nation. 

 There were too many of us trying to take too much profit out of our own 

 business. The nation could not stand that strain. We should have given 

 some of the time called "leisure time" to the construction of our community, 

 to the construction of our state aud our nation, and have realized that near- 

 ly four hundred billion dollars of a debt was created throughout the civilized 

 world by all the nations owing each other, caused by a destructive program 

 for nearly six years. 



Let us spend the next hundred years in teaching our children, our grand- 

 children, their grandchildren and great grandchildren, to go forth and under- 

 stand the human problems of life and to understand how totally dependent 

 we are upon each other, to understand that relationship and to learn to love 

 each other. Why, you can't be friendly with your neighbor until you know 

 him. You may hate your neighbor, but to. know him is to learn to like him. 

 We have been criticising, we have been attempting to correct our economic 

 conditions by criticism. 



There isn't any group to blame for this we are all to blame. We can- 

 not learn to co-operate upon the program of criticism. We cannot criticse 

 continuously and at the same time co-operate. So we must get together. 

 Here we are farmer, doctor, lawyer, merchant, manufacturer, professional 

 man, teacher, preacher assembled at a great institute meeting, an organiza- 

 tion which meets regularly, one that has been built for the good of the 

 people; these are the gatherings in America that are going to put us on our 

 feet where we can all get together to discuss our relationship. 



A BIG BUSINESS, BUT NOT PROFITABLE. 



We have failed to look upon agriculture as a business, and we do not 

 understand today, most of us, that agriculture is by far the biggest business 

 in the nation, a bigger business than all the rest of business combined. 



As a business man and farmer during the last fifteen years I have 

 learned one lesson; that the business end of farming is a hard one and that 

 the money in farming is mighty little, and all in all, in fifteen years, my opin- 

 ion is that the American farmer hasn't made a dollar. Counting the labor, 

 the investment, and the false credit for the profit because of the rise in the 

 value of his land, and counting the fertility that has been robbed from the 

 soil which belongs to all of us, the average farmer in the last fifty years 

 hasn't accumulated any money; therefore, he hasn't made any money. I 

 am therefore sure farming has not been a profitable business as a whole. 



Some farmers have made money, but if you could come with me into 

 the ten or fifteen southern states and spend one month with me in the rural 

 schools and in the homes of those states and see your fellow farmers, and 

 compare them to the wonderful homes, roads, churches and schools you have 

 here in the states of greater rural development, you would agree that these 

 statements are true. 



Now, the farmer who does make money cannot maintain his business 

 unless the average farmer in America makes money. Wheat might be raised 

 cheaper in Kansas than in the other states, cotton might be raised cheaper 

 in some states than in the others, livestock and poultry, and what not, might 

 be raised cheaper in some than in others, but the average farming of this 

 nation is the problem we are trying to solve today, what his average cost 

 is and what his profit is, because his profit represents from forty-five to 

 sixty per cent of the buying power of the whole nation. All the rest of the 

 buying power depends upon this farmer. His buying power today is at least 

 eight billion dollars short. 



