Much has been said about the protective policy for ourselves making it impossible for our debtors to discharge their obligations to us.  This is a contention not now pressing for decision.  If we must choose between a people in idleness pressing for the payment of indebtedness, or a people resuming the normal ways of employment and carrying the credit, let us choose the latter.  Sometimes we appraise largest the human ill most vivid in our minds.  We have been giving, and are giving now, of our influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off the crushing burdens of armament.  It is all very earnest, with a national soul impelling.  But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger, face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater obligation to-day is to do the Government’s part toward resuming productivity and promoting fortunate and remunerative employment.

Something more than tariff protection is required by American agriculture.  To the farmer has come the earlier and the heavier burdens of readjustment.  There is actual depression in our agricultural industry, while agricultural prosperity is absolutely essential to the general prosperity of the country.

Congress has sought very earnestly to provide relief.  It has promptly given such temporary relief as has been possible, but the call is insistent for the permanent solution.  It is inevitable that large crops lower the prices and short crops advance them.  No legislation can cure that fundamental law.  But there must be some economic solution for the excessive variation in returns for agricultural production.

It is rather shocking to be told, and to have the statement strongly supported, that 9,000,000 bales of cotton, raised on American plantations in a given year, will actually be worth more to the producers than 13,000,000 bales would have been.  Equally shocking is the statement that 700,000,000 bushels of wheat, raised by American farmers, would bring them more money than a billion bushels.  Yet these are not exaggerated statements.  In a world where there are tens of millions who need food and clothing which they can not get, such a condition is sure to indict the social system which makes it possible.

In the main the remedy lies in distribution and marketing.  Every proper encouragement should be given to the cooperative marketing programs.  These have proven very helpful to the cooperating communities in Europe.  In Russia the cooperative community has become the recognized bulwark of law and order, and saved individualism from engulfment in social paralysis.  Ultimately they will be accredited with the salvation of the Russian State.

There is the appeal for this experiment.  Why not try it?  No one challenges the right of the farmer to a larger share of the consumer’s pay for his product, no one disputes that we can not live without the farmer.  He is justified in rebelling against the transportation cost.  Given a fair return for his labor, he will have less occasion to appeal for financial aid; and given assurance that his labors shall not be in vain, we reassure all the people of a production sufficient to meet our National requirement and guard against disaster.