[Extracts from President Wilson's message to the Farmers' Conference at
Urbana, Ill., January 31, 1918.]
The forces that fight for freedom, the freedom of men all over the
world as well as our own, depend upon us in an extraordinary and
unexpected degree for sustenance, for the supply of the materials by
which men are to live and to fight, and it will be our glory when the
war is over that we have supplied those materials and supplied them
abundantly, and it will be all the more glory because in supplying them
we have made our supreme effort and sacrifice.
In the field of agriculture we have agencies and instrumentalities,
fortunately, such as no other government in the world can show. The
Department of Agriculture is undoubtedly the greatest practical and
scientific agricultural organization in the world. Its total annual
budget of $46,000,000 has been increased during the last four years
more than 72 per cent. It has a staff of 18,000, including a large
number, of highly trained experts, and alongside of it stands the
unique land grant colleges, which are without example elsewhere, and
the 69 State and Federal experiment stations. These colleges and
experiment stations have a total endowment of plant and equipment
of $172,000,000 and an income of more than $35,000,000 with 10,271
teachers, a resident student body of 125,000, and a vast additional
number receiving instructions at their homes. County agents, joint
officers of the Department of Agriculture and of the colleges, are
everywhere cooperating with the farmers and assisting them. The
number of extension workers under the Smith-Lever Act and under the
recent emergency legislation has grown to 5,500 men and women working
regularly in the various communities and taking to the farmer the
latest scientific and practical information. Alongside these great
public agencies stand the very effective voluntary organizations among
the farmers themselves which are more and more learning the best
methods of cooperation and the best methods of putting to practical
use the assistance derived from governmental sources. The banking
legislation of the last two or three years has given the farmers access
to the great lendable capital of the country, and it has become the
duty both of the men in charge of the Federal Reserve Banking System
and of the Farm Loan Banking System to see to it that the farmers
obtain the credit, both short term and long term, to which they are
entitled not only, but which it is imperatively necessary should
be extended to them if the present tasks of the country are to be
adequately performed. Both by direct purchase of nitrates and by the
establishment of plants to produce nitrates, the Government is doing
its utmost to assist in the problem of fertilization. The Department
of Agriculture and other agencies are actively assisting the farmers to
locate, safeguard, and secure at cost an adequate supply of sound seed.
The farmers of this country are as efficient as any other farmers
in the world. They do not produce more per acre than the farmers in
Europe. It is not necessary that they should do so. It would perhaps
be bad economy for them to attempt it. But they do produce by two to
three or four times more per man, per unit of labor and capital, than
the farmers of any European country. They are more alert and use more
labor-saving devices than any other farmers in the world. And their
response to the demands of the present emergency has been in every way
remarkable. Last spring their planting exceeded by 12,000,000 acres
the largest planting of any previous year, and the yields from the
crops were record-breaking yields. In the fall of 1917 a wheat acreage
of 42,170,000 was planted, which was 1,000,000 larger than for any
preceding year, 3,000,000 greater than the next largest, and 7,000,000
greater than the preceding five-year average.
But I ought to say to you that it is not only necessary that these
achievements should be repeated, but that they should be exceeded.
I know what this advice involves. It involves not only labor but
sacrifice, the painstaking application of every bit of scientific
knowledge and every tested practice that is available. It means the
utmost economy, even to the point where the pinch comes. It means the
kind of concentration and self-sacrifice which is involved in the
field of battle itself, where the object always looms greater than the
individual. And yet the Government will help and help in every way that
it is possible.
It was farmers from whom came the first shots at Lexington, that set
aflame the Revolution that made America free. I hope and believe that
the farmers of America will willingly and conspicuously stand by to win
this war also. The toil, the intelligence, the energy, the foresight,
the self-sacrifice, and devotion of the farmers of America will, I
believe, bring to a triumphant conclusion this great last war for the
emancipation of men from the control of arbitrary government and the
selfishness of class legislation and control, and then, when the end
has come, we may look each other in the face and be glad that we are
Americans and have had the privilege to play such a part.