with growing crops as it has dealt in the past, but it must still further extend its field of usefulness hereafter by dealing with live men, through a far-reaching study and treatment of the problems of farm life alike from the industrial and economic and social standpoint.  Farmers must cooperate with one another and with the Government, and the Government can best give its aid through associations of farmers, so as to deliver to the farmer the large body of agricultural knowledge which has been accumulated by the National and State governments and by the agricultural colleges and schools.

The grain producing industry of the country, one of the most important in the United States, deserves special consideration at the hands of the Congress.  Our grain is sold almost exclusively by grades.  To secure satisfactory results in our home markets and to facilitate our trade abroad, these grades should approximate the highest degree of uniformity and certainty.  The present diverse methods of inspection and grading throughout the country under different laws and boards, result in confusion and lack of uniformity, destroying that confidence which is necessary for healthful trade.  Complaints against the present methods have continued for years and they are growing in volume and intensity, not only in this country but abroad.  I therefore suggest to the Congress the advisability of a National system of inspection and grading of grain entering into interstate and foreign commerce as a remedy for the present evils.

The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our National life.  We must maintain for our civilization the adequate material basis without which that civilization can not exist.  We must show foresight, we must look ahead.  As a nation we not only enjoy a wonderful measure of present prosperity but if this prosperity is used aright it is an earnest of future success such as no other nation will have.  The reward of foresight for this Nation is great and easily foretold.  But there must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.  For the last few years, through several agencies, the Government has been endeavoring to get our people to look ahead and to substitute a planned and orderly development of our resources in place of a haphazard striving for immediate profit.  Our great river systems should be developed as National water highways, the Mississippi, with its tributaries, standing first in importance, and the Columbia second, although there are many others of importance on the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf slopes.  The National Government