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absurd. We can accomplish it here, and it is necessary for us 

 to do it and to do it along the right lines, but I feel that this 

 is important. Over there these systems of finance are devised 

 by the government or by the people in town, and accepted by 

 the people in the country. In this country, where the farm is 

 the breeding place of brains, and where the people who run the 

 government in the cities come from the land, they have been 

 rather independent, and when the man in the town — in the 

 city — attempts to instruct or tell the farmer what to do, he 

 says, "Go hang, I don't need any advice from you." But the 

 time has come in this country when we are realizing that our 

 interests are one in the development of our natural resources. 

 In carrying on this great machinery of government and all its 

 financial system we are realizing more and more its co-operative, 

 its collective thought, its organization that accomplishes these 

 things, and if the chambers of commerce will take an interest, 

 and the farmers will come into the chambers of commerce, and 

 the city men will join some of the country organizations, we 

 can collaborate and bring out a system that is financially, 

 economically and fundamentally sound. If we do this, the 

 next twenty-five years of advance in American rural life is 

 going to be tremendous, because the credit system is as neces- 

 sary as the track upon which the engine runs for the railway. 

 You may develop education and develop along other lines, but 

 keep the archaic credit system the way it is and the farming 

 communities, the rural districts of the United States, will not 

 come to their own for many, many years to come. It has been 

 kept out of politics so far, and that is one of the encouraging 

 signs of the times, namely, the idea of taking questions which 

 belong to business out of politics and treating them as we must 

 and should treat them, — as business questions. Now just 

 one more word in conclusion. This is the most momentous 

 time in the history of our lives, one time possibly excepted, the 

 civil war. We seem to feel that we are remote here from that 

 great conflagration which is destroying society and civilization. 

 We seem, in a sense, remote from it. Our time is coming later. 

 There will be placed upon the people of the United States a 

 responsibility, a task to perform, — we won't speak of oppor- 

 tunities, — greater than was ever placed upon any people in the 



