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leading men of the country recognize this fundamental truth. Here is an 

 extract from the President's recent message to which I want you to listen: 



"It is rather shocking to be told, and to have the statement strongly 

 supported, that 9,000,000 bales of cotton, raised on American plantations 

 in a given year, will actually be worth more to the producers than 

 13,000,000 bales would have been. Equally shocking is the statement 

 that 700,000,000 bushels of wheat, raised' by American farmers, would 

 bring them more money than 1,000,000,000 bushels. Yet these are not 

 exaggerated statements. In a world where there are tens of millions 

 who need food and clothing, which they cannot get, such a condition is 

 sure to indict the social system which makes it possible. 



"In the main, the remedy lies in distribution and marketing. Every 

 proper encouragement should be given to the co-operative marketing 

 programmes. Those have proven very helpful to the co-operative com- 

 munities in Europe. In Russia the co-operative community has become 

 a recognized bulwark of law and order, and saved individualism from 

 engulfment in social paralysis. Utimately they will be accredited with 

 the salvation of the Russian state." 



In these movements we cannot succeed unless we have the confidence of 

 each other. Alone and single handed, we cannot win. You remember 

 what Abraham Lincoln said: "The twig by itself is easily broken, but bound 

 together with others in a solid, compact bundle, the strongest arm cannot 

 break them." Individually you and I are weak and ineffectual; but together 

 we are strong and powerful. If the farmers of America can only see their 

 way clear gradually to center their efforts in a few great national organiza- 

 tions, agriculture will be the most powerful force in American life. 



FACTS REGARDING PRICES. 



In order to thoroughly appreciate the necessity for organized activity I 

 desire to cite a few concrete facts: 



If we take the average wholesale prices for the years 1910 to 1914 

 inclusive as our basis, we will find that the average wholesale price at the 

 close of the World War in 1918 was 200 per cent of the base price. Strange 

 as it may seem, there was identically the same average price at the close 

 of the Civil War in 1865, using this same basis for our computation 200 

 per cent. At the close of the War of 1812, in 1814, the average wholesale 

 price was 235. 



After 'every great war, as we have previously stated, the forces of busi- 

 ness and society compel price declines. Within two years after the War of 

 1812 prices declined 78 points. Within two years after the Civil War prices 

 declined 41 points. But what happened after the World' War? Instead of 

 prices going down after the war ceased, prices went up. In 1920, two years 

 after the World War, prices were 50 points higher than they were at the 

 close of the war itself directly contrary to the experience of all peoples 

 after all great wars. The same occurred in other nations. There are two 

 possible explanations: First, this was not a local war, but one in which all 

 the great nations were involved, and yet we ask ourselves: Did not those 

 peoples in other nations go back to work producing the necessities of life? 

 If the law of supply and demand had free play, why was there not an im- 

 mediate decline in prices with the falling off of the demand.? 



A second possible explanation is that labor and business were better 

 organized after the World War than after the War of 1812 or after the Civil 

 War. But organized industry could not withstand the natural laws of 

 commerce. Sooner or later those prices had to come down. From June 1920 

 to June 1921, prices in the United States on an average declined 100 points. 

 This was twice as great a decline as ever occurred during any other years 

 in the history of the American people; and during this precipitous decline, 

 when all American industry was forced to participate in the readjustment 

 in business and commerce that was in progress, the American Government se- 



