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We are here today as business men from the little town you have been trad- 

 ing with. We have come here not to tell you what to do, but to ask you to 

 do some things in a co-operative way with us. We have been farming wrong 

 in Arkansas and we have brought the experts from the University, from the 

 Department of Agriculture. Here they are today. These men know scien- 

 tific farming. We are broke in Arkansas. Now, unless we get money to 

 save Arkansas from a great catastrophy from you farmers we never can 

 build up Arkansas. We want you next year to have a better garden than 

 you had last year. We want you to set aside an acre or two for oats; we 

 want you to set aside an acre or two for corn, and a little pasture if you can. 

 We want you to get a cow. We want you to get a few more pigs, a few more 

 chickens, and when you have done that then raise all the cotton you can 

 raise. Please don't raise any cotton until you have fed yourself and family. 

 Don't raise so much food and feed that you will have a lot on hand, because 

 we haven't established markets." 



The farmer would get up in the back of the room and say: "Mr. 

 Banker, I have been trading with you for twenty years. I know you 

 are right; but you dont' know what you are asking us to do something that 

 is impossible. We have not been taught this diversified farming. My kid- 

 dies have been taught to raise cotton and to pick cotton. I haven't the 

 machinery, I haven't the fertilizer, I haven't the money to buy, I haven't 

 the seed, I haven't the animals. I can't change farming in a night. I have 

 got to have help." 



The banker would say: "Mr. Farmer, we know that. We will lend you 

 help. The merchant is here to say he will back you; the doctor says he 

 will take care of your family when they are sick until you can pay. The 

 university is here, the county agent will be furnished to you. The govern- 

 ment says it will help you with the seed, and we, as bankers, will help you 

 with money." 



The farmer, like a man, rose in every case and said, "Then I will do 

 the work." Was that agreement a victory? Yes, it was, and I will say 

 that was co-operation. There wasn't any dividing line in that state then be- 

 tween town and country. Here's what happened in a year. A hundred and 

 fifty thousand of those farmers said: "Yes, we will change. Give us some 

 seed, lend us some money, give us a cow, we will give our mortgage for it; 

 we will, if necessary go bankrupt, but we will try." In one year from that 

 time the government sent its experts to Arkansas and they figured that 

 we had more than thirty-five million dollars more food and' feed and raised 

 as much cotton as we had ever raised in the history of the state. Was that 

 a victory? 



My friends, let me give you a picture after seven years. The old school- 

 house that was boarded up, without windows, and unfavorable educational 

 conditions there, where the little kiddies had a limited' time each day for 

 schooling, is changing in Arkansas slowly to the consolidated school. The 

 good roads are coming in. The banker who never loaned on anything but 

 cotton has a man behind the counter who knows something of livestock. 

 Millions of dollars have been spent by the government and we have eradicated 

 that horrible pest the tick, and now we can raise livestock; and you farm- 

 ers know what livestock means to a farm that we can't diversify and rotate 

 unless we do it through the livestock route. We could not do that before; 

 now we have a chance. Although Illinois, as rich as she is, with her sixty 

 million dollar road program, and Missouri with her sixty million; and forty 

 or fifty million in Iowa still Arkansas has now issued a hundred million 

 worth of road bonds and is building a hundred million dollars' worth of 

 roads more than any other state in the United States. 



She is building it, not out of cotton. She is going to pay for those roads 

 out of corn, oats, wheat, hay, clover; she is going to pay for it out of live- 

 stock; she is going to pay for it out of fruit and vegetables. Cotton is still 

 king, and always will be, because of the climatic condition; but when we 

 learn to rotate the cotton crop and bring back the fertility of the land, we 

 are going to build a wonderful state. 



