highest bidder whether he be a domestic operator, an exporter, or a foreign buyer. Grain should be accumulated in shipload lots so as to permit of competitive selling and competitive bidding.

Now, then, what is really our remedy? Our ultimate solution of our problems? Is it cooperation? Yes. Is it finances? Yes; but it is more, and in regard to finances, gentlemen, let me just refer briefly to the difficulties which cooperative institutions have had. They go out to a locality and get money enough from the farmers to provide them with a warehouse, a grain elevator, for instance, and then they have no money with which to finance, and they borrow on short-time basis, and they have a hard year or two, lose some money, and their finances are gone. Then they are at the mercy of the banker or at the mercy of the terminal grain commission merchant who has loaned them money. I believe that our laws should be slightly changed so as to permit the Farm Loan Bank to issue debentures against mortages on farmers' cooperative elevators and warehouses and sell those debentures. That is the process now in force as related to farm loans. Farmers' organizations and associations mortgage their land; the land bank takes those mortgages and sell debentures against them to the investors. Why not include in those processes mortgages on elevator companies, so that if a farmers' company had an elevator worth $10,000 they could issue a mortgage for $3,000, take that mortgage to the Farm Loan Bank and get their money at a reasonable rate of interest on a long-time basis. I personally believe that that should be done.

Now, then, in regard to better prices and the permanent solution of the difficulties of agriculture in this country, I believe that that solution lies in the rehabilitation of Europe. Europe is the great customer for agricultural products. Europe is the country to which we have sold our products in the past. That is where our customers live. Our chief difficulty now lies not in the fact that there are no customers. The customers are there; they are willing to buy; they are willing to pay, but they have not the wherewithal to meet these payments. This fact was forced home on us there in St. Paul last August and September when we started our collective selling of wheat. We received requests from representatives of Austria, representatives of Czechoslovakia, representatives of Norway, and other European countries offered to buy wheat from us, pay above the market price if we would accept half cash in settlement of the purchase price, and take Government securities for the balance. We were not in a position to do this, and I think that here is a governmental function; that it is up to the Government to provide those people with credit so that they can buy our products. We have almost reached the point where the farmer can not pay interest any longer on what he has already borrowed, and our Government has given us splendid assistance the Federal Reserve Bank, the Farm Loan Bank, and the War Finance Corporation, but we shall soon reach the point where further credit to the farmers will be of no use, that they will not be able to pay taxes and interest on what they have borrowed. Now, when that time comes we shall be absolutely up against it unless something is done.

I have been advocating that the Federal Government should extend one or two billion dollars credit to Europe to assist them in

buying agricultural products; buy our cotton, our meats, our wool, our leather, and our grain. I realize, however, that it is not fundamentally sound as permanent policy. If we keep on extending credit to the Europeans we will pauperize them; we will convert them into bums, as the slang phrase goes; they will be expecting something for nothing, and hand in hand with extension of credit to foreigners there should go a governmental policy aimed at putting those foreigners to work. What we need first of all over there is peace. The greatest prosperity that this country has ever witnessed or that the world ever witnessed was from the years 1897 to 1914. That included both Republican and Democrat administrations. We have some Democrats up in Minnesota. I want to tell my friend from Louisiana his section of the country has by no means a monopoly of Democrats; we have that species up our way and we are thankful therefor. These years from 1897 to 1908 were years of peace. Every nation was at work, was producing, was interchanging their products. Those years Germany became the greatest industrial and commercial nation on the earth. Their merchants were in every land; their products were on sale on every counter in the world. Their financial system was world-wide. They built the greatest merchant marine of its time, and on the day when Germany ceased work and drew the sword our hard times really began; that was the beginning. And I am firmly convinced that the end will not come until Germany has been rehabilitated, until peace has actually been established. Germany and other countries there do not know as yet where their boundaries are. They are not absolutely certain as to what indemnities they will have to pay. They have no stable governments. Now, you must have peace before you can expect people to go to work. Nobody is going to work if they are in doubt as to what their compensation will be, or if they are not certain that there is going to be a government which will protect their property and their lives, and the lives of those dependent upon them.

Now, those things can only be settled by the participation of this country in the settlements, I do not care what others may think. We were engaged in the war to help win it. We should not shrink the responsibilities of restoring peace. That is not a criticism on our President or on our Congress. As I said in the beginning, I for one have come here to state what I believe to be the truth, and I am talking to this instrument here and to you, not in criticism of our Government, but as a suggestion, as a humble suggestion to the Government. They are going to have a meeting over there in Genoa, a conference. A meeting of whom? Germany, France, Russia, England, Italy, and others. A meeting of our debtors, if you please. They owe us $10,000,000,000. I believe that Uncle Sam should be represented there, and if I had that much coming and if you had that much coming from a bunch of debtors, and those fellows were holding a meeting you would go in and ask them what they proposed to do about it. And we owe it to those people to say what we are going to do with that ten billion. We can not stabilize exchange while that thing hangs in the air, and they can not purchase from us until their money is worth something. We should tell them, and tell them immediately, whether or not we expect them to pay that ten billion. Personally, I would

make that conditional. I would say to them: "Here, you will either pay that ten billion or you will quit your fighting and go to work." So I believe that Uncle Sam should be represented at the Genoa conference.

Again, we have been told by leading economists and also by Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Hoover, and his commission, that Europe can not be rehabilitated unless Germany is put on its feet, and that Germany can not be placed on its feet commercially or economically speaking until she has been told what her reparations will be. There is a commission appointed for the purpose of determining the reparations, the amount of time in which to pay. A seat has been reserved for our Nation, and I believe that we should accept the invitation to participate by appointing a representative of the Reparation Commission."

Now, gentlemen, these, I believe, are absolutely essential in the solution of our problems. We shipped 440,000,000 bushels of all kinds of grain to Europe last year. The amount that we receive for that grain is the determining element in the amount that we receive for grain here at home, because it is the exportable surplus that ultimately determines the price. Let us participate in the economic rehabilitation of Europe because in no other way can our economic difficulties be solved in this country, and because we owe it to the world, after having participated in that war, to assist in the establishment of permanent peace. I thank you.

THE NEED OF A FOOD SUPPLY FOR AN INCREASING POPULATION. By Dr. E. D. BALL, of the United States Department of Agriculture. We have listened to the recital of the serious troubles that have befallen the agricultural industry in the different sections of the United States. It has been impressed upon us that this situation was not confined to the producer alone but the same conditions prevail in all the industries allied to agriculture. In fact the evidence is overwhelming of a serious national and international situation.

That agriculture received the first and worst effects of this condition is practically conceded by all, as is illustrated by the amount of time and attention that have been given to the subject of the agricultural situation by every agency of the Government. Congress authorized a most exhaustive investigation of this situation and the two reports of the joint committee now before you will long be models of thoroughness of investigation and clarity and brevity of presentation. If the problems of the immediate present were all that were before this convention, an indorsement of the conclusions of this commission together with the working out of plans for putting them in operation would accomplish its every purpose.

There is, however, a future as well as a past to consider and here the picture brightens. American agriculture was the first to suffer in this world-wide cataclysm and will undoubtedly be the first to reAlready the situation has improved wonderfully in the cotton belt. Other regions are beginning to feel more hopeful and as time

goes on we will undoubtedly turn our attention largely to the troubles of other industries as they in turn go through the trough of the depression.

The experiences of the past year, though dearly bought, may in the end prove to be a blessing to agriculture. They will be more than a blessing-they will be an endowment-if out of this experience the farming industry becomes generally recognized as the foundation of national prosperity; if commerce and industry come to an abiding realization of the fact that it is only out of the surpluses of production that their workers are fed-that the producers eat at the first table and the wage earners at the last; if out of this crisis agriculture obtains the favorable legislation that it has long needed to enable it to function properly and efficiently; if out of adversity come comprehensive stable and efficient organizations of producers, and it is only out of adversity that such organizations have been builded in the past. Farming is an occupation that requires independence and self-reliance. No other type of man can succeed, but these same characters make it very difficult to bring about cooperation. Sudden adversity may bring them together but only continued adversity can weld them so closely that returning prosperity will not loosen the bond.

To summarize: If out of this situation the farmer of the future obtains recognition, legislation, and organization, he will in the end have profited by the experience. It will indeed have been a high price to pay but history in general, and that of our own country in particular, has shown that liberty and justice have been purchased at the price of much suffering, privation, and bloodshed.

The problem before the American Nation to-day is, however, not only of the immediate present but of the immediate future, and if we are wise, even more of the decades to come. No nation can be successful that does not plan in advance, that does not anticipate its problems and thus avoid many of the disasters that would otherwise occur. If more planning had been done in the past the present situation might have been largely averted; in fact many phases of it might have been turned to advantage and resulted in permanent expansion and development rather than in the present contraction and stagnation. But organized agriculture did not look ahead. In fact, agriculture was not organized for that purpose or for any other purpose, so the best that we can do now is to work our way out of the present situation and plan for the future. Time has always been one of the great factors in righting world conditions. Just how long that time will be, no one at the present time is willing to prophesy but all are willing to concede that the change will come. Humanity has always had faith in the future and that faith has never failed. If some one possessed the magic wand that Chairman Anderson suggested and could restore the world to a normal condition we would suddenly be confronted with the fact that there is no overproduction; that what the world is suffering from is underconsumption. There is not enough food in the world at present to provide for the inhabitants. If buying power could be restored to-morrow, the surpluses would almost instantly disappear.

If we study our own national situation carefully we will find many encouraging things from the standpoint of the present situation but

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almost equally discouraging from the standpoint of the future. Our Nation has just passed its three hundredth birthday, an infant in age beside the other nations of the earth. If we will glance back into our history we will find that in 1790, at the time of the first census of the newly formed Republic, we had less than 3,000,000 people; that in 1820, at the close of the second century after our foundation, we had less than 10,000,000 population; while in the century just passed we have increased almost 100,000,000 as against the 10,000,000 of the two centuries before.

If we study the history of this remarkable increase as compared with our slower increase in previous times and the still slower increase of many other nations of the earth, we shall soon find that the reason is best portrayed in the accompanying map which shows the production of food and raw materials distributed by States. A glance at this map will show you that the New England States, our colonial home, had but a meager production in the past as it has at the present time; that it was only when the canals and railroads had been constructed and the territory to the west of the Alleghenies had been opened up that the Nation began to develop.

It was not in fact until the period following the Civil War, when the Nation gave to every returning soldier 160 acres of land and made easy provisions for others to acquire similar amounts, that the great development of the Mississippi Valley, from Ohio and Kentucky westward, to the Dakotas and Texas, took place. The southern region produces our excess of cotton; the upper Mississippi Valley, nearly all of the excess of food. It was then that food of all kinds, as well as raw materials, became excessively abundant and relatively cheap. Manufacturing industries responded to this and took on a new impetus and our Nation increased rapidly in population, wealth, and power.

No wonder that with this vast addition we became very complacent as a Nation and were rather boastful of our accomplishment. In the 50 years following the Civil War we increased our cotton production five times, our wheat production four times, our corn production three times, while our population only increased two and three

fourths times.

No wonder that when the Secretary of Agriculture stated that the United States produced 25 per cent of the wheat, 60 per cent of the cotton, and 75 per cent of the corn of the world, with only onesixth of its population, the Nation should feel it was on a firm foundation and its future prosperity assured.

But in all this we are talking largely in the past tense. The peak of agricultural production per capita of population was passed in 1898, nearly a quarter of a century ago. Agricultural production almost kept pace with population increase for some little time after that date, but in the last decade it has been steadily and evermore rapidly falling.

Probably this can be more concretely shown by the definite statement that the cotton production has fallen in a decade from 14,000,000 bales to less than 12,000,000 bales. Corn production reached its peak a decade ago and has remained practically stationary ever since. The 1920 acreage of 104,000,000, exactly the same as it was in 1910. The 1920 crop was larger, however, due to an exceptionally favor