WHAT IS THE AGRICULTURAL BLOC? 5 



which must be spent for the products of the 

 labor of city workers. 



The organization of the agricultural group 

 in the Congress should not have been necessary. 

 Since the foundation of the United States the 

 fixed national policy has been to foster the op- 

 portunity of the man on the land. Our earliest 

 pioneers came to America because of the op- 

 portunities to live in freedom on the land; land 

 that hasi become more and more the foster- 

 mother of liberty. Even while enjoying the 

 greatest growth ever experienced by any nation, 

 a large part of our people have drifted away 

 from the primary principle that the interests 

 of agriculture must not be submerged under 

 the interests of industrial and commercial de- 

 velopment. While professing great faith in 

 the man on the land our people have developed 

 an apathy toward the real needs of agriculture 

 until an impending disaster, long forecast and 

 foretold, had to break upon our heads to awaken 

 us. 



Even then, the apathy continued. For three 

 whole years an almost constant series of warn- 

 ings by our leading statesmen, economists and 

 thinkers failed to awaken the nation to the need. 



Then the American farmer asserted himself. 



