THE PRESroENT TO THE FARMERS OF AMERICA. 



[Extracts from President Wilson's message to the Farmers' Conference at Urbana, III., Jan. 31, 1918.] 



"The forces that fight for freedom, the freedom of men all over the world as well 

 as our own, depend upon us in an extraordinary and unexpected degree for sustenance, 

 for the supply of the materials by which men are to live and to fight, and it will be our 

 glory when the war is over that we have supplied those materials and supplied them 

 abundantly, and it will be all the more glory because in supplying them we have 

 made our supreme effort and sacrifice. 



"In the field of agriculture we have agencies and instrumentalities, fortunately, 

 such as no other government in the world can show. The Department of Agriculture 

 is undoubtedly the greatest practical and scientific agricultural organization in the 

 world. Its total annual budget of $46,000,000 has been increased during the last 

 four years more than 72 per cent. It has a staff of 18.000, including a large number of 

 highly trained experts, and alongside of it stand the unique land-grant colleges, which 

 are without example elsewhere, and the 69 State and Federal experiment stations- 

 These colleges and experiment stations have a total endowment of plant and equip- 

 ment of 1172,000,000 and an income of more than |.35.000,000, with 10,271 teachers, a 

 resident student body of 125,000, and a vast additional number receiving instruction 

 at their homes. County agents, joint officers of the Department of Agriculture and 

 of the colleges, are everywhere cooperating with the farmers and assisting them. The 

 number of extension workers under the Smith-Lever Act and under the recent emerg- 

 ency legislation has grown to 5,500 men and women working regularly in the various 

 communities and taking to the farmer the latest scientific and practical information. 

 Alongside these great public agencies stand the very effective voluntary organizations 

 among the farmers themselves which are more and more learning the best methods of 

 cooperation and the best methods of putting to practical use the assistance derived 

 from governmental sources. The banking legislation of the last two or three years 

 has given the farmers access to the great lendable capital of the country, and it has 

 become the duty both of the men in charge of the Federal-reserve banking system 

 and of the farm-loan banking system to see to it that the farmers obtain the credit, 

 both short term and long term, to which they are entitled not only, but which it is 

 imperatively necessary should be extended to them if the present tasks of the country 

 are to be adequately performed. Both by direct purchase of nitrates and by the 

 establishment of plants to produce nitrates, the Government is doing its utmost to 

 assist in the problem of fertilization. The Department of Agriculture and other 

 agencies are actively assisting the farmers to locate, safeguard, and secure at cost an 

 adequate supply of sound seed. 



"The farmers of this country are as efficient as any other farmers in the world. 

 They do not produce more per acre than the farmers in Europe. It is not necessary 

 that they should do so. It would perhaps be bad economy for them to attempt it. 

 But they do produce by two to three or four times more per man, per unit of labor 

 and capital, than the farmers of any European country. They are more alert and 

 use more labor-saving devices than any other farmers in the world . And their response 

 to the demands of the present emergency has been in every way remarkable. Last 

 spring [1917] their planting exceeded by 12,000,000 acres the largest planting of any 

 previous year, and the yields from the crops were record-breaking yields. In the 

 fall of 1917 a wheat acreage of 42,170,000 was planted, which was 1,000,000 larger 

 than for any preceding year, 3,000,000 greater than the next largest, and 7,000,000 

 greater than the preceding five-year average. 

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