"In the future, we have got to bring more of the area of the United States under cultivation than is under cultivation now. We have got to increase the product at every point where it is susceptible of being increased. Mine of the things that has most interested me about what has been done recently by legislation for the benefit of the farmer is the question why it was not done long before. It is astonishing that the assets, the valuable, available assets, the visible assets of the farm should not have been available as a basis of credit in the banks on the same terms as the assets of commercial undertakings and manufacturing industry. Cattle are just as visible and tangible as goods in warehouses and goods on trains.

"We have liberated the credits of the banks, and we have mobilized, through the Department of Agriculture, the scientific intelligence of the world. With that combination, every nation in the world ought to come to us to learn how to raise big crops. We ought to raise such big crops that circumstances like the present can never recur, when men can make them if the supply was so short that the middleman could charge for it what he pleased. It will not do to be disregarded with the world in respect of its food supply." 