I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that special
provision be made also for facilitating the credits needed by the
farmers of the country. The pending currency bill does the farmers a
great service. It puts them upon an equal footing with other business
men and masters of enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage they
will find themselves quit of many of the difficulties which now hamper
them in the field of credit. The farmers, of course, ask and should be
given no special privilege, such as extending to them the credit of the
Government itself. What they need and should obtain is legislation which
will make their own abundant and substantial credit resources available
as a foundation for joint, concerted local action in their own behalf in
getting the capital they must use. It is to this we should now address
ourselves.

It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have allowed the
industry of our farms to lag behind the other activities of the country
in its development. I need not stop to tell you how fundamental to the
life of the Nation is the production of its food. Our thoughts may
ordinarily be concentrated upon the cities and the hives of industry,
upon the cries of the crowded market place and the clangor of the
factory, but it is from the quiet interspaces of the open valleys and
the free hillsides that we draw the sources of life and of prosperity,
from the farm and the ranch, from the forest and the mine. Without these
every street would be silent, every office deserted, every factory
fallen into disrepair. And yet the farmer does not stand upon the same
footing with the forester and the miner in the market of credit. He is
the servant of the seasons. Nature determines how long he must wait for
his crops, and will not be hurried in her processes. He may give his
note, but the season of its maturity depends upon the season when his
crop matures, lies at the gates of the market where his products are