One year ago I suggested the submission of an amendment so that we may lawfully restrict the issues of tax-exempt securities, and I renew that recommendation now.  Tax-exempt securities are drying up the sources of Federal taxation and they are encouraging unproductive and extravagant expenditures by States and municipalities.  There is more than the menace in mounting public debt, there is the dissipation of capital which should be made available to the needs of productive industry.  The proposed amendment will place the State and Federal Governments and all political subdivisions on an exact equality, and will correct the growing menace of public borrowing, which if left unchecked may soon threaten the stability of our institutions.

We are so vast and so varied in our national interests that scores of problems are pressing for attention.  I must not risk the wearying of your patience with detailed reference.

Reclamation and irrigation projects, where waste land may be made available for settlement and productivity, are worthy of your favorable consideration.

When it is realized that we are consuming our timber four times as rapidly as we are growing it, we must encourage the greatest possible cooperation between the Federal Government, the various States, and the owners of forest lands, to the end that protection from fire shall be made more effective and replanting encouraged.

The fuel problem is under study now by a very capable fact-finding commission, and any attempt to deal with the coal problem, of such deep concern to the entire Nation, must await the report of the commission.

There are necessary studies of great problems which Congress might well initiate.  The wide spread between production costs and prices which consumers pay concerns every citizen of the Republic.  It contributes very largely to the unrest in agriculture and must stand sponsor for much against which we inveigh in that familiar term—­the high cost of living.

No one doubts the excess is traceable to the levy of the middleman, but it would be unfair to charge him with all responsibility before we appraise what is exacted of him by our modernly complex life.  We have attacked the problem on one side by the promotion of cooperative marketing, and we might well inquire into the benefits of cooperative buying.  Admittedly, the consumer is much to blame himself, because of his prodigal expenditure and his exaction of service, but Government might well serve to point the way of narrowing the spread of price, especially between the production of food and its consumption.

A superpower survey of the eastern industrial region has recently been completed, looking to unification of steam, water, and electric powers, and to a unified scheme of power distribution.  The survey proved that vast economies in tonnage movement of freights, and in the efficiency of the railroads, would be effected if the superpower program were adopted.  I am convinced that constructive measures calculated to promote such an industrial development—­I am tempted to say, such an industrial revolution-would be well worthy the careful attention and fostering interest of the National Government.