withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers
find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in
thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of
existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a
foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by
no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers
conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much
to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts
have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it
languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because
the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through
their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their
failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers
stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts
and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern
of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed
only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which
to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have
resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.
They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no
vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our
civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The