Address of D. F. Houston, secretary of agriculture, before the Association of American agricultural colleges and experiment stations, Auditorium hotel, Chicago, Ill., November 12, 1919

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ADDRESS

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D. F. HOUSTON

Secretary of Agriculture
BEFORE THE

Association of American Agricultural Colleges
and Experiment Stations

AUDITORIUM HOTEL
Chicago, Ill., November 12, 1919

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
CIRCULAR 147
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY

Washington, D.C. November, 1919

WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE ¢ 1919

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MAR 12 1929

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ADDRESS OF D. F. HOUSTON,

SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE.

BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EX-
PERIMENT STATIONS, AUDITORIUM HOTEL, CHICAGO, ILL., NOVEMBER 12, 1919.

NE YEAR AGO yesterday word came across the ocean that the
armistice had been signed and that hostilities had ceased.
Throughout the Nation celebrations were quickly organized and the
people rejoiced. And they had good reason for rejoicing; for the
strong enemy of free peoples had been crushed and the wholesale
destruction of human beings had ended. Doubtless few of them
dreamed that at the end of a year the Nation still would not have
peace. To-day there is for us and other peoples neither peace nor
war; and there is not only the unrest, which is the natural heritage
of war, but also the uncertainty and added difficulties which exist
because of the failure finally to conclude peace. Few students of
history imagined when the armistice was signed that this Nation
or the world would quickly return to a stable condition. History
clearly teaches the impossibility of quick adjustments after great
wars. The Napoleonic war was followed by a long period of tur-
moil; and the difficulties for half a generation after our Civil War
are fresh in the minds of many of us. Still there were few of us
who did not anticipate an earlier completion of the formal peace
processes and a prompt exclusive devotion of governments to the
work of liquidating the war.

WORLD IN STATE OF DOUBT.

It is not my purpose or desire to attempt to assign responsibility
for the delay in making peace; but I may note, as we all must, the
results of the delay. The whole world remains in a state of doubt
and hesitation. The people of the new nations particularly can not
make their plans with any confidence, because some of them do not
yet know what their alignments will be or what kind of peace will
exist when it does come. With the Central Powers our commercial
relations have not yet been reestablished. In them we have no con-
sular or trade agents, while some of the Allies, having ratified the
treaty of peace, are laying their plans to occupy the commercial

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fields of Germany and Austria and are already engaged in trade
vith them. The difficulties of our situation are daily brought home
to people throughout the Union, and particularly to executive and
legislative officers; and the handicaps we shall suffer by additional
delay are obvious. We are unable to determine the scale of our
Military and Naval Establishments, intelligently to make a financial
budget, or to plan our scheme of taxation. If the League of Na-
tions is to be a reality there is prospect of very considerable dis-
armament, with a consequent reduction in expenditure and taxation.
It is imperative that this should oecur. The war has shown clearly
what military preparation means and what sort of armament we
shall be compelled to maintain if a competitive military régime is
to persist. Where, before the war, our Military Establishment en-
tailed a burden of two or three hundred millions of dollars, it will
hereafter, on a competitive basis, involve expenditures of not less
than a billion and a half. Further embarrassment results from the
fact that there is no way of determining the dtration of émergency
legislation. There are statutes which expire with the proclamation
of peace. This may happen in two weeks or two years, and, there-
fore, business men and administrative officers do not know how to
make their plans and form judgments. Production programs of all
sorts are fundamentally affected and disturbed conditions furnish
agitators favorable opportunities for conducting their vicious propa-
ganda. Obviously, the existing state of things makes for inetfective-
ness of national life in every direction and the persistence and per-
haps extension of present burdens and sacrifices.

UNREST LESSENING PRODUCTION.

The present industrial unrest. in part a heritage of the war, is ag-
gravated by our state of uncertainty. It is mounting higher and is
crippling production at the very time when a paramount need of
the Nation and of the world is a sealing down of prices and a re-
duction of the cost of living which, in the main, can result only from
increased production and thrift. Practices are resorted to which
greatly increase the already heavy burdens of industry and thwart
the efforts of private and governmental agencies to furnish relief.
Increased wages are demanded to meet the high cost of living and
higher prices are asked to cover increased cost; and so the Nation
faces a process of pyramiding, which, if not checked, will lead to
industrial collapse and untold suffering. I do not undertake to pass
judgment on the strike as a weapon for labor in normal times.
But one thing is certain. In existing circumstances, it can only
check production, lessen the volume of national wealth to be dis-
tributed, and increase the cost of living, not only for labor but for all
the other citizens of the Republic. Another thing is certain. It is

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not a remedy to which labor ought to be forced to resort. It is a
crude way of settling a dispute, as war is; and it is not creditable to
us as a Nation that we can not find another and better way—that we
can not establish conditions which will make a strike a thing of the
past. All the people of the Nation are bearing the burden imposed
by reduced production and no one class in society can hope to escape
it as the expense of all other classes. “We must unite, not divide,
to correct the evil.” This Nation needs now to feel the patriotic
impulse quite as much as it did during the war. If the preservation
of the hberties of the Nation was worth fighting for surely the
opportunity victory has brought to pursue unhindered the tasks of
improvement should call out our best impulses. Peace has her need
for patriotism no less intense than war; and the trouble seems to be
with us, as Lloyd George said of the English people, that we have
demobilized patriotism too soon.

EFFECT ON FARMERS.

Present conditions bear with peculiar weight on the farmers of
the Nation. It is not improbable that natural economic forces operat-
ing during the ensuing 12 months will produce a slow decline in prices
and that, in spite of anything that can be done, the reduction may
be more marked in the case of agricultural products. This may
result from the fact that agricultural production during the war
was not only maintained but extended, while industrial production
for nonmilitary purposes decreased in some directions; that Europe
may recover more rapidly agriculturally than industrially; and
that the opening up of shipping will bring back into the markets
of Europe the products of more distant nations. It is reasonably
clear that Europe will be hard pressed for food supplies, at least
until after the harvest of 1920. Russia is likely to be a negligible
factor so far as exports of foodstuffs to other nations are concerned.
European countries in the aggregate probably will not produce this
year more than 70 per cent of their prewar normal output. Appar-
ently Poland, Austria proper, and Italy will be in especially difficult
circumstances; and all the central and western European nations
will be compelled to import large quantities of cereals and meat
products. The quantities they can secure will be limited, in part, by
their impaired ability to pay for them. They are seeking credits
not only for food supphes but also for raw materials for their
industries. Obviously, they can devote only a part of the eredits
they receive to the purchase of foods. Unquestionably, they will
attempt to obtain these in the cheapest markets. Before the Euro-
pean war Great Britain, the principal food-importing nation, secured
most of her beef from her colonies and from Argentina. In 1913 her
imports of beef from Argentina and Australia amounted to over

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8,500,000,000 pounds. They decreased during the war until in 1918
she was receiving from these countries only 2,555,000,000 pounds,
while, on the other hand, her imports from the United States rose in
the same period from 1,462,000 pounds in 1913 to 8,583,000,000 in
1918. Shipping is opening up again and there are indications that
the United Kingdom is once more turning to her former sources for
supplies of beef. The exports of beef (including oleo oils) from this
country to the United Kingdom during July of this year aggregated

5,300,000 pounds as against 72,000,000 in June, 1918, while the exports
of noe (including dard) during July of this year amounted to
154,000,000 pounds as against 220,000,000 in June, 1919. Although
the United States will be called upon to furnish Europe large supplies
of food, certainly until after the next harvest, it appears that there
is already a tendency for the exports of certain products to decline;
and it may be, if Europe has good seasons next year, that our exports
may return toward the prewar normal. We shall soon be concerned
with the planting program of our farmers for the spring of 1920. In
view of all the circumstances, it seems that it would be wise for the
same suggestion to be made to them as was made in the early part of
the year, namely, that they should practice safe farming, returning
to a balanced agriculture and to the operations best suited to their
own individual and community conditions.

While economic forces may be the main factors in reducing the
prices of farm commodities, they will not be obvious to many people;
and there will be a disposition to attribute any drop in prices to the
action of Government or of private agencies. The impression seems
to have got abroad that the Government was concerning itself only
with the prices of foodstuffs and that the farmer would be hit first
and exclusively. That such was the Government’s intention is, of
course, far from the truth. Its object was primarily to prevent
profiteering in all the necessaries of life and it is as much concerned
in preventing profiteering in manufactured products as in food
products. The Attorney General, in seeking power to deal with the
problem, asked Congress to extend the ermrral act to cover manu-
factured necessaries, which was done, and has instructed his agents
to give special attention to dealers in such commodities.

EVERY PRODUCING CLASS MUST DO ITS PART.

The trouble is that the press in discussing the cost of living
thinks almost exclusively in terms of food and limits its statements
principally to such products. The difficulty has been increased by
the fact that not a few business men have asserted that the cost
of living can not be reduced unless the prices of foodstuffs fall, and
that the prices of foodstuffs will not fall unless there is greatly in-
creased production. Obviously, it is useless and unjust to ask farmers

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to increase production, buying what they have to buy at the present
scale of prices, with the intimation that, at the end of the crop
year, their products will fall in price and that then the manufac-
turers will consider what they can do in respect to their products.
Certainly it is desirable to return to a stable condition at as early a
date as possible. Every class of producers in the country must do
its part and manufacturers should be willing to make at least a
contemporaneous reduction in the prices of their products.

SOME PREREQUISITES FOR RURAL CONTENTMENT.

Many people ignorant of rural problems talk and write as if farm-
ing were not a business and as if food production did not involve the
expenditure of capital and labor. The demand of the city is for
cheap food and that more abundantly. There are those who talk
as if there could be an unlimited number of farmers. This may have
been true when the farm was self-sufficient and produced little or
no surplus. But, obviously, to-day there should be, and, in the long
run, there will tend to be, enough farmers to produce their pro-
portion of what the world will buy at prices which make production
profitable. Certainly farming must pay. There will be farmers
enough if the business of farming is made profitable and if rural
life is made attractive and healthful. The farmer, as well as the
industrial worker, is entitled to a living wage and to a reasonable
profit on his investment. He is entitled also to satisfactory educa-
tional opportunities for his children and to the benefits of modern
medical science and sanitation. When these requirements are met
there will be no difficulty in retaining in the rural districts a sufficient
number of contented and efficient people. What we need is not
back-to-the-land propaganda, but an acceleration of the work for the
improvement of the countryside which will render the abandonment
of farms unnecessary and the expansion of farming inevitable. I
am sure that the farmers of the Nation are perfectly willing to do
their part in producing and saving if all other producers in the
Nation will set about doing their part.

NEED FOR FRESH RURAL SURVEY.

Present conditions, and particularly present states of mind, in-
dicate the need of a fresh, broad survey of rural life, of its special
problems, and of its relationships. It should be viewed as a whole.
A comprehensive flexible program should be developed for the
guidance of the different agencies, each of which has its peculiar
functions and responsibilities. Furthermore, the principles and pur-
poses governing agricultural life and agencies should be set forth
for the education of the American public, particularly the urban
part of it. The Nation as a whole needs a fuller appreciation

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of its basic industry, and a more definite sense of direction of its
efforts to foster it. Many agencies are now following more or less
well-defined, helpful plans of their own devising, but these are at
best piecemeal, and there is confusion of leadership and objectives.
A program made by any one element would be partial and unsatis-
factory. We should have a meeting of minds of all those directly
concerned, of farmers, of agricultural leaders, and of business men.
This need was ably presented by your president, Dean Davenport,
and by Dr. Butterfield, and I need not enter into details. My pres-
ent suggestion is that there should first be held a relatively large con-
ference, and that the matter of setting up a small temporary or
permanent commission be then determined.

The calling of such a conference is very definitely in the Presi-
dent’s mind. In connection with the recent industrial conference,
he authorized me to make it known that he intended to ask for
another meeting which would deal especially with problems which
more intimately concern farmers. The industrial conference was
expected to consider only the problem of the relation of employers
to employees in manufacturing, and he invoked the aid of six
agricultural representatives to assist in its solution, deeming this
number adequate in the circumstances. The conference now sug-
gested would, of course, call for a very generous representation of
farmers and agricultural leaders.

SERVICE OF COLLEGES.

T keenly recognize that the agricultural colleges of the States, like
the Federal department itself, are now confronted with unusual
difficulties and are laboring under serious embarrassments; and yet
in the midst of these they are called upon to render even more urgent
service. 1 have long had an exalted opinion of the value of these
institutions to our democracy. Recent events have caused me even
more highly to prize them and more clearly to recognize their need.
They have made it singularly clear that agricultural institutions
must omit no step to add, through research and experiment, to the
sum of our scientific knowledge. In some instances, available infor-
mation has proven to be fragmentary. In others there were no re-
sults at hand on which to base intelligent conclusions. Up to a
short time ago investigation had seemed to run ahead of facilities
for conveying information; but with the improvement in publication
activity, the expansion of the agricultural press, and particularly
the firm establishment of the extension service, the danger is now
rather that our teaching may outrun the accumulated stock of knowl-
edge and become sterile. Of course, neither the problems of produc-
tien nor those of distribution have been solved. As economic con-
ditions change and become more complex new and vital research

BS Bis OP BE, Tid ny

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problems will arise. The Nation should have a well-balanced pro-
gram not only of instruction but also of research. To this end, it must
secure and retain the services of its most talented scientific and
practical men; and this means something in terms of dollars and cents.
It means that we must not only place the investigator on a higher
financial plane but also give those who have talent funds and facilities
in generous measure. It is increasingly clear that, in all positions of
responsibility, the State and the Nation must be prepared to secure
and retain men of the requisite training and experience and to make
the conditions sufficiently attractive. Our democracy is to-day
threatened with inefficient service because of its failure to provide
a reasonably decent compensation for men of capacity charged with
large responsibilities, and our democratic arrangements may either
break down or result in commonplace performance, if reasonable re-
quirements are not met.

SAFEGUARDING DEMOCRACY.

But the agricultural colleges of the country owe a duty outside
their technical field, outside their fields of investigation and tech-
nical education. They are charged, as I conceive it, with something
more even than the task of improving farming. Present conditions
point to the need of leadership along broader lines in rural as
well as in urban districts. We can not too frequently refresh the
minds of all our people as to the nature and meaning of democracy,
of our governmental institutions and ideals; and there is in rural
districts, as well as in urban, a considerable body of people, many
of them recently come among us, unacquainted with our institutions
and purposes, familiar only with conditions radically different from
ours, who certainly need a sympathetic induction into American
life and the most energetic assistanee that all our educational in-
stitutions can furnish.

Some of them need more than this. They need to be taught the
very elements of democracy and the meaning of the rule of law.
The people of this country are committed to the rule of the ma-
jority and to the rule of law. There is no good cause which can not
get a hearing from our people. It is the privilege of men who
advocate it to persuade the majority that they are right. If they
can, they can secure what they seek at the polls. Tf they can not,
they must abide by the will of the majority or suffer the penalty.
Not to do so is treason to the majority. The majority will not
tolerate any effort of a misguided minority to impose its will by
violence. It does not intend to live under the spell of threats and
menaces. And the average American will not be patient with those
who say that if they do not like a law they may not obey it.

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NO CLASS RULE.

Nor will the American people have any patience with those who
advocate the dominance or rule of any class. Democracy arose on
the downfall of a class. Our forefathers did not want class rule.
They deposed such autocrats as the Stuarts, the Bourbons, and their
adherents, who sought to tyrannize over the masses. There is no
one class in society that has sense enough to rule all the others. Any
one class would make a sad failure of governing this Nation or any
other. History teaches that lesson very plainly. I am in favor of
improving our Government whenever the need for improvement is
demonstrated, but not of upsetting it. There will and must be
changes, but these changes must be discussed and made according to
the processes of law and of American life and institutions, and not
according to the whim of some class. The American people are still
committed to the theory of representative government, of government
made up of representatives of all the people. I do not believe they
will substitute for it representation of groups of interests, with a
strugele on the part of each group to dominate; and I think that they
will not accept the theory that employees of the Government, munici-
pal, State, or Federal, may strike to secure what they wish. Tam
unable to see how a group of individuals can claim the privilege of
striking against the body politic without arrogating to itself the
position of supremacy over the people. It is time for very plain
speaking and for the inculcation of some very commonplace truths.
We are all in sympathy with rational proposals for the improve-
ment of the masses of the less fortunate people of the Nation and
of the world, but this improvement must come by orderly processes.
And we must recognize that, after all, the real progress of humanity
is slow. In times lke these, progress is rapid, but not so rapid as
it seems to some. During great upheavals, people have not infre-
quently thought that they have got very much further than they
actually have. They have got more out of the experience than there
was init. France did this at the end of the eighteenth century, when
she enthroned reason, and thought that she had got, in a few years, to
a point she has not yet reached. Russia is now making the same
blunder.

STANDARDS OF CONDUCT.

What we need is cool judgment, open minds, regard for facts, and
courage to follow conclusions based on them. ‘These characteristics
the institutions of learning of the Nation are peculiarly fitted to in-
culeate. Let us have debate, criticism, and progress by all means, but
let us have constructive criticism, and let us have progressives who
know where they are headed and why. Let us demand that our pub-

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lic men and the agencies whose task if is ce) inferm and lead publ

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opinion, shall show a conscientious regard for facts and

people helpful interpretations of them. This is no time for mere

partisan tactics, for personal abuse. and for mi representation of
men, policies, and institutions. Men of any p rty in responsible
positions, or of the press, who make statements which they known |

hot tru OV~. what is quite as yermiclou ancl more COMMOen, stat

ments they do not know to be truc nly contribute to the spirit Ol
unrest and irritation and tend in no small measure to furnish justifi
cation to jonorant OV evil-minded Perso) none’ us for their acts
of violence and crime. They assume a Prave r Ik and vill not escape

their share of respon bility fou what May happr

I confidently call upon the universities and colleges here represented
nic ( reeticall to lead the cdueational for oft the Nation in tl
patriotic task of keeping before the minds of all our people the mean
ing and value of our institutions, of Americanizing our populatioy
of recent foreign extraction, of trenethening our useful nationa
habit Oy thoueht, and of hoidine our publieis and ] blic m cyt
high st ards of utteranee and action

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