ent price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great
scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting
for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will
be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.

The Government of the United States and the Governments of the
several States stand ready to co-operate. They will do everything
possible to assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an
adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at
harvest-time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers
and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when
harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is
possible to make it, and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation
of the nation's food-supply by those who handle it on its way to the
consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a
great democracy, and we shall not fall short of it!

THE DUTY OF MIDDLEMEN

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are
handling our foodstuffs or the raw materials of manufacture or the
products of our mills and factories: The eyes of the country will be
especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service,
efficient and disinterested. The country expects you, as it expects
all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite
shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an
eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who
enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall
confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of
every sort and station.

THE MEN OF THE RAILWAYS

To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be
managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the
arteries of the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense
responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no
obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the
merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service,"
and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends
upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the
seas, no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. The places of
those that go down must be supplied, and supplied at once. To the
miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does: the work of