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All bush/ess men, doctors, lawyers, professional men, are needed in this 

 nation, and so is the farmer. The farmer must understand that the city 

 is needed and the town and city man must understand that the farmer is 

 needed, and the sooner we get together in our Chambers of Commerce, farm 

 bureaus, and all other civic and business organizations, the quicker we can 

 do this big job together, letting each organization function, if you will, 

 separately, but having members of each to sit on boards of directors in other 

 organizations, and to get a common understanding and see that the busi- 

 ness men of the city are informed upon the problems of the farm, and see 

 that in the farm bureaus and various farm organizations that there are 

 enough city folks there to interpret the problems of the city. 



Both sides can be fair. Both sides ought to be fair, but that lack of 

 understanding, that suspicion and jealousy on the part of both sides for 

 years and years has grown in some communities until it has caused a pitiful 

 condition. Conditions of this sort are separating the people instead of 

 bringing them together. The coming of the farm bureau is a big thing be- 

 cause it is a big institution, composed of all groups of farmers, various or- 

 ganizations coming together, with its basic program education; education 

 in farm problems, the backing of the Smith-Hughes and the Smith-Lever 

 bills, the building of universities and colleges of agriculture, the backing 

 of the boys' agricultural clubs, of home economics, of teaching and social 

 uplift work. These educational organizations are the basis on which we are 

 going to reconstruct our country. We will soon be able to put enough or- 

 ganizations of farmers together, not for malicious action or selfishness but 

 for the benefit of all mankind, to understand the real meaning of farm prob- 

 lems. These farm organizations, Chambers of Commerce, commercial clubs, 

 and others, will get together and solve the economic problems. But until 

 both sides are well organized, it cannot be done. 



EXAMPLES OF PROFITABLE CO-OPERATION. 



I want to refer to a great example of co-operation the great Arkansas 

 campaign. In 1914 war broke out in England, France, Germany and Russia. 

 The staple cotton crop of the South, which was our life's blood, about ninety- 

 five per cent of all we had, dropped at that time to six cents a pound. We 

 expected twelve for it. Our state went broke in a night time because our 

 farming business went broke. We learned that we had been buying all of 

 our food and feed out of the state, and when cotton dropped from twelve 

 to five and a half or six cents, we did not have enough cotton money to buy 

 the food and feed that we used that year. We called together a hundred 

 bankers in Arkansas, at Little Rock at the Chamber of Commerce, and there 

 for eight hours we discussed this problem. One bright banker said: "Let 

 us find out how much money we send out of the state for food and feed." 

 They sent six of us out over the state for six weeks. We went to the brok- 

 ers and retail men, we went to the railroad men and we checked up the 

 following figures: Twenty-five millions for meat, twenty -three millions for 

 canned goods and the balance of eighty-three million dollars for corn, oats 

 and mixed feed, to feed the mules that made the cotton crop. Just think of 

 it! Eighty-three million dollars sent away for those things we should have 

 raised on the farms. In consequence we were broke. All the bankers 

 knew was to loan on cotton; all the merchants knew was to sell on cotton 

 credit. That crop for forty years had robbed the fertility out of the soil 

 and thousands of acres were not producing half what they produced forty 

 years ago. Was that a serious condition? Well, we put on a campaign 

 known as "Let Arkansas feed herself." We called on your state and the 

 best agricultural experts. We took men from the county agents, we took 

 them from the Department of Agriculture everyone that we could get. We 

 got about sixty of the best agricultural experts in the country. We traveled 

 thirty thousand miles in eight weeks. We went into each county. We 

 talked to a hundred and fifty thousand farmers in their churches and in 

 their school houses. Sometimes there would be thirty or forty at a meeting 

 The banker would get up and say: "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Farm: 



