THE PRESIDENT TO THE FARMERS OF AMERICA. 
[Extracts from President Wilson’s message to the Farmers’ Conference at Urbana, Ill., January 31, 1918. 
The forces that fight for freedom, the freedom of men all over the world as wel! 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 equipment oi $172,000,000 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 Agri- 
culture and of the colleges, are everywhere cooperating with the farmers and assist- 
ing them. The number of extension workers under the Smith-Lever Act and under 
the recent emergency legislation has grown to 5,500 men and women working regu- 
larly 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-saying devices than any other farmers in the world. And their 
response to the demands of the present emergency has been in every way remark- 
able. 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 
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