If the farmers are to sell their products in sufficient quantities to cities at a price that they can afford to pay, the calm and considerate judgment and the earnest cooperation of every class of our people are needed. We have problems before us that cannot be settled today or tomorrow; they involve questions of deep statesmanship; and they never can be settled until they are settled right, on a basis that is just. And I have this faith in the American people, that notwithstanding all their mistakes and all their follies and all their extravagances and all their partisan differences, down at the bottom they are an honest people, they are an intelligent people, and they are a people that seem to have an instinct of danger and an instinctive perception of what is fundamentally and inherently right. (Prolonged applause)
Mr Hill—I want to apologize to Brother Wallace because I did not make myself entirely understood when I indicated that $50 or $42 or $45 an acre for Government-irrigated land is too high. He says that I would give $100—and I would, if I had to; but if that land were left with private enterprises, or if the people of the State alongside of this $42 and $45 and $50 land were putting water on their land for $15, I wouldn't charge the settler $50 or $42. (Laughter and applause)
Chairman Clapp—Ladies and Gentlemen: There is a tradition in Washington that the present very efficient Secretary of Agriculture established the Department of Agriculture, because of his long service in that position. I have to dispel that illusion. Nevertheless his service has made that Department what it is today; and I take great pleasure in presenting to you Secretary Wilson. (Great applause)
Secretary Wilson—Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have enjoyed the two last speeches more than anything else I have heard since I have been here, although I have never attended a meeting anywhere that I can remember where there were so many big men who do things in the world. The greatest regret I have is that there must be more than a hundred men here well worth hearing who will not have opportunity to speak on account of lack of time.
Mr Hill and Mr Wallace have talked about things that I have not done. Fourteen years ago I went down to Washington with President McKinley to do something with the Department of Agriculture. I could see right well from tendencies that had originated some time previous a growing and a development that now at this present time have come to a head. I saw the necessity for Conservation of the natural utilities of this country, the necessity for Conservation of soils and forests and water-powers and all those things; and I went to work. I have never gone to Congress to get help or money without getting it at once. If I have failed to do something for agriculture, the fault is mine and not that of Congress, because they have never criticized me, except that I have not asked for enough money.
I have found it necessary to educate men, or to have them educated, along new lines. Search history as far back as you see fit to go, and you will find that there has been no education whatever for the farmer. The classical education, so beautifully spoken about by our friend from Tulane University (President Craighead), is a beautiful education; but there is no agriculture in it. It is a difficult thing to change the education of a people; even our religion is interwoven, like our literature, with the old-fashioned classical education. The country was regarded as valuable and the professions went to the country to get new men because the old wore out in the town, and so the farm has always reinforced the professions; and the practice has gone on until today the American Navy is being reinforced even from the farms of Minnesota and Iowa. The average boy who lives in town knows too much about things he shouldn't know, and the boy on the farm or in the country knows little about the things that wouldn't do him any good if he did know them (laughter). My first problem was to organize a Department of Agriculture by training men to go safely where there were but few blazings through the woods.
Mr Hill and Mr Wallace have both spoken wisely of the soil. That is the source of our wealth. When our good people travel abroad, the farmer pays the bill; when you beautiful ladies purchase diamonds—and sometimes bring them back in your hats—the farmer pays the bill (laughter). Of course, since the Civil War the farmer has been keeping the balance of trade in our favor—has paid all our foreign debts, has paid the cost of our wars, has paid all the expenses of shipments to foreign ports; but a new day has come. While the farm has been producing considerably more and its area has been increasing, certain things have occurred that have a momentous influence on the present and on the future. We have not been producing so fast as we have been increasing in population; it costs too much to get breakfast and dinner and supper, and we eat three times a day. The serious problem which presents itself to us now is that it costs too much to live. I never want to see the day come when the American workingman shall be reduced to the condition of the European who makes his dinner on bread alone and still lives. (Applause)