Failure to face up to basic issues in areas other than those of labor-management can cause serious strains on the firm freedom supports of our society.

I refer to agriculture as one of these areas.

Our basic farm laws were written 27 years ago, in an emergency effort to redress hardship caused by a world-wide depression.  They were continued—­and their economic distortions intensified—­during World War II in order to provide incentives for production of food needed to sustain a war-torn free world.

Today our farm problem is totally different.  It is that of effectively adjusting to the changes caused by a scientific revolution.  When the original farm laws were written, an hour’s farm labor produced only one fourth as much wheat as at present.  Farm legislation is woefully out-of-date, ineffective, and expensive.

For years we have gone on with an outmoded system which not only has failed to protect farm income, but also has produced soaring, threatening surpluses.  Our farms have been left producing for war while America has long been at peace.

Once again I urge Congress to enact legislation that will gear production more closely to markets, make costly surpluses more manageable, provide greater freedom in farm operations, and steadily achieve increased net farm incomes.

Another issue that we must meet squarely is that of living within our means.  This requires restraint in expenditure, constant reassessment of priorities, and the maintenance of stable prices.

We must prevent inflation.  Here is an opponent of so many guises that it is sometimes difficult to recognize.  But our clear need is to stop continuous and general price rises—­a need that all of us can see and feel.

To prevent steadily rising costs and prices calls for stern self-discipline by every citizen.  No person, city, state, or organized group can afford to evade the obligation to resist inflation, for every American pays its crippling tax.

Inflation’s ravages do not end at the water’s edge.  Increases in prices of the goods we sell abroad threaten to drive us out of markets that once were securely ours.  Whether domestic prices, so high as to be noncompetitive, result from demands for too-high profit margins or from increased labor costs that outrun growth in productivity, the final result is seriously damaging to the nation.

We must fight inflation as we would a fire that imperils our home.  Only by so doing can we prevent it from destroying our salaries, savings, pensions and insurance, and from gnawing away the very roots of a free, healthy economy and the nation’s security.

One major method by which the Federal government can counter inflation and rising prices is to insure that its expenditures are below its revenues.  The debt with which we are now confronted is about 290 billion dollars.  With interest charges alone now costing taxpayers about 9 1/2 billions, it is clear that this debt growth must stop.  You will be glad to know that despite the unsettling influences of the recent steel strike, we estimate that our accounts will show, on June 30, this year, a favorable balance of approximately $200 million.