Agriculture is a very complex industry.  It does not consist of one problem, but of several.  They can not be solved at one stroke.  They have to be met in different ways, and small gains are not to be despised.

It has appeared from all the investigations that I have been able to make that the farmers as a whole are determined to maintain the independence of their business.  They do not wish to have meddling on the part of the Government or to be placed under the inevitable restrictions involved in any system of direct or indirect price-fixing, which would result from permitting the Government to operate in the agricultural markets.  They are showing a very commendable skill in organizing themselves to transact their own business through cooperative marketing, which will this year turn over about $2,500,000,000, or nearly one-fifth of the total agricultural business.  In this they are receiving help from the Government.  The Department of Agriculture should be strengthened in this facility, in order to be able to respond when these marketing associations want help.  While it ought not to undertake undue regulation, it should be equipped to give prompt information on crop prospects, supply, demand, current receipts, imports, exports, and prices.

A bill embodying these principles, which has been drafted under the advice and with the approval of substantially all the leaders and managers in the cooperative movement, will be presented to the Congress for its enactment.  Legislation should also be considered to provide for leasing the unappropriated public domain for grazing purposes and adopting a uniform policy relative to grazing on the public lands and in the national forests.

A more intimate relation should be established between agriculture and the other business activities of the Nation.  They are mutually dependent and can each advance their own prosperity most by advancing the prosperity of the other.  Meantime the Government will continue those activities which have resulted in an unprecedented amount of legislation and the pouring out of great sums of money during the last five years.  The work for good roads, better land and water transportation, increased support for agricultural education, extension of credit facilities through the Farm Loan Boards and the intermediate credit banks, the encouragement of orderly marketing and a repression of wasteful speculation, will all be continued.

Following every other depression, after a short period the price of farm produce has taken and maintained the lead in the advance.  This advance had reached a climax before the war.  Everyone will recall the discussion that went on for four or five years prior to 1914 concerning the high cost of living.  This history is apparently beginning to repeat itself.  While wholesale prices of other commodities have been declining, farm prices have been increasing.  There is every reason to suppose that a new era in agricultural prosperity lies just before us, which will probably be unprecedented.