I turn to matters of domestic concern.  You already have under consideration a bill for the reform of our system of banking and currency, for which the country waits with impatience, as for something fundamental to its whole business life and necessary to set credit free from arbitrary and artificial restraints.  I need not say how earnestly I hope for its early enactment into law.  I take leave to beg that the whole energy and attention of the Senate be concentrated upon it till the matter is successfully disposed of.  And yet I feel that the request is not needed-that the Members of that great House need no urging in this service to the country.

I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that special provision be made also for facilitating the credits needed by the farmers of the country.  The pending currency bill does the farmers a great service.  It puts them upon an equal footing with other business men and masters of enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage they will find themselves quit of many of the difficulties which now hamper them in the field of credit.  The farmers, of course, ask and should be given no special privilege, such as extending to them the credit of the Government itself.  What they need and should obtain is legislation which will make their own abundant and substantial credit resources available as a foundation for joint, concerted local action in their own behalf in getting the capital they must use.  It is to this we should now address ourselves.

It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have allowed the industry of our farms to lag behind the other activities of the country in its development.  I need not stop to tell you how fundamental to the life of the Nation is the production of its food.  Our thoughts may ordinarily be concentrated upon the cities and the hives of industry, upon the cries of the crowded market place and the clangor of the factory, but it is from the quiet interspaces of the open valleys and the free hillsides that we draw the sources of life and of prosperity, from the farm and the ranch, from the forest and the mine.  Without these every street would be silent, every office deserted, every factory fallen into disrepair.  And yet the farmer does not stand upon the same footing with the forester and the miner in the market of credit.  He is the servant of the seasons.  Nature determines how long he must wait for his crops, and will not be hurried in her processes.  He may give his note, but the season of its maturity depends upon the season when his crop matures, lies at the gates of the market where his products are sold.  And the security he gives is of a character not known in the broker’s office or as familiarly as it might be on the counter of the banker.