I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant food-stuffs as well as cotton.  They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for their liberties and for our own.  The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.

The Government of the United States and the governments of the several States stand ready to cooeperate.  They will do everything possible to assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when harvested.  The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation’s food supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer.  This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great Democracy and we shall not fall short of it!

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are handling our food-stuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or the products of our mills and factories:  The eyes of the country will be especially upon you.  This is your opportunity for signal service, efficient and disinterested.  The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves.  I shall confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of every sort and station.

To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of the nation’s life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power.  To the merchant let me suggest the motto, “Small profits and quick service”; and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends upon him.  The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom.  The places of those that go down must be supplied and supplied at once.  To the miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does:  the work of the world waits on him.  If he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are helpless.  He also is enlisted in the great Service Army.  The manufacturer does not need to be told, I hope, that the nation looks to him to speed and perfect every process; and I want only to remind his employees that their service is absolutely indispensable and is counted on by every man who loves the country and its liberties.