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every business enterprise in Chicago, except the banks, and ' if our panic 

 had gone farther, the two banks that blew up there the other day probably 

 would have been harbingers of a general collapse. But I think for the 

 time being we have warded off a general smash. 



However, business is still flat. The other day I was in the east. 1 

 asked a friend, "How is business?" He said, "It is going on four flat tires." 

 And even he was too optimistic. I am told that Julius Rosenwald had to 

 throw between fifteen and eighteen million dollars into Sears-Roebuck to 

 keep it afloat. That is just one sample of a process that has been going 

 on all over the country. Business is just as hard hit, fellow farmers, as 

 we are. 



PROBLEM OF SURPLUS CHOPS. 



What is the cause? There are a good many causes. Of course there 

 is no one cause for anything. One of the big causes of our present trouble, 

 as you farmers know, is high freight rates. Another big cause is a cumber- 

 some and costly system of marketing farm products. Both of those causes 

 are very complicated and hard to remedy. It will take years to work out 

 a solution for either of these problems. But there is one problem, and 

 luckily for us it is the one that has caused the most trouble of all, that is 

 comparatively simple and that can be quickly solved. That is the problem 

 of the surplus crops. Any of you who drive motors know that it doesn't 

 take much sand in the gear box, nor much water in the gas, nor much of a 

 short circuit to put a car out of commission. These surplus crops of ours 

 have done just that with our whole economic and financial system. 



Roughly speaking we have less than a billion dollars' worth of surplus 

 agricultural crops for which there is neither a domestic demand nor a 

 foreign cash demand. That constitutes about five or six percent of the total 

 crops of the country. That may sound to you like a negligible quantity. 

 A mere handful of sand in the gear box might sound like a negligible quan- 

 tity too, but it isn't. Anyhow this less than a billion dollars' worth of sur- 

 plus crops, constituting perhaps five or six per cent of our total crop, has 

 depressed the value of the other ninety-five per cent of our crops, more than 

 five times its own value, or several billion dollars. Moreover it has injured 

 business to an equal extent. I am speaking the literal truth. This is rather 

 an understatement than an exaggeration. 



Since this unsaleable surplus has depressed the value of the rest of our 

 farm crops several billion dollars' worth, evidently if we could not sell it 

 for cash the next best thing woud be to sell it on credit, and if we could not 

 do that the next best thing would be to give it away, and if we could not 

 do that it would be a blessing of Almighty God to send a bolt from heaven 

 to wipe it out. We would make several hundred percent even on that oper- 

 ation. 



WHAT OUR GIFT TO RUSSIA DID. 



Some of you may be saying to yourselves, "That sounds very interest- 

 ing, if true." Well, I am from Missouri myself. I was born there, so I 

 have got a few cards up my sleeve for anybody that doesn't know that the 

 surplus is the controlling factor in determining prices. I have a fact or two 

 that will demonstrate the accuracy of these statements. A few weaks ago, 

 the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives asked 

 some of us to go before them to speak in favor of a proposal to have the 

 United States Government make a gift of food to the famine sufferers in the 

 Volga basin of Russia. The bill appropriated ten million dollars to be spent 

 for American corn to be shipped to Russia. Mr. Hoover was there, together 

 with Governor Goodrich of Indiana, who had just been over in Russia, and 

 a number of other men. I went before the Committee at the request of 

 American Farm Bureau Federation. And when we were through with our 

 testimony they doubled the amount of the appropriation and made it twenty 

 million dollars. Then Mr. Hoover got the Servian government to give ten 



