and cut production, and the Farm Bill gives them a method of
bringing their production down to a reasonable level and of
obtaining reasonable prices for their crops. I have clearly stated
that this method is in a sense experimental, but so far as we have
gone we have reason to believe that it will produce good results.

It is obvious that if we can greatly increase the purchasing power
of the tens of millions of our people who make a living from
farming and the distribution of farm crops, we will greatly
increase the consumption of those goods which are turned out by
industry.

That brings me to the final step--bringing back industry along
sound lines.

Last Autumn, on several occasions, I expressed my faith that we can
make possible by democratic self-discipline in industry general
increases in wages and shortening of hours sufficient to enable
industry to pay its own workers enough to let those workers buy and
use the things that their labor produces. This can be done only if
we permit and encourage cooperative action in industry because it
is obvious that without united action a few selfish men in each
competitive group will pay starvation wages and insist on long
hours of work. Others in that group must either follow suit or
close up shop. We have seen the result of action of that kind in
the continuing descent into the economic Hell of the past four
years.

There is a clear way to reverse that process: If all employers in
each competitive group agree to pay their workers the same wages--