Address to the Future Farmers of America.

I AM very glad to welcome you to Washington and I wish I had the time and opportunity to participate in your meetings, because they are of very great personal as well as official interest to me.

I want to say a word or two to you. You are the younger generation who are going to have in your hands the future of American rural life.

I myself was born on a farm, so I know something about it. This is no news to you who are engaged in the profession of agriculture, but you know perfectly that the odds are a thousand to one against your becoming millionaires as farmers.

But you will be doing something more important than becoming millionaires. You will be building up for future generations the soundest kind of American life and will, I think, know that even though you do not make a great deal of money, the odds are a thousand to one that you will never starve. And you will always have a roof over your heads, and you will have good educational facilities, and that is a great deal more than many in industrial life can be assured of.

I want you all to do all you can to bring home to this country the advantages of rural life. In regard to farming itself, you know we are engaged today for the first time in a program on a very large scale to save the timber supply of this country. We all know the need and necessity for lumber. It is one commodity that is indispensable to us in this country.

We have only a timber supply of the old virgin type to supply the nation for thirty or forty years. We are using up this timber about four times as fast as it grows. There are a great many farmers that have not wooded lots that ought to have them.

I believe this country can be made self-sustaining from the standpoint of its own timber supply. That can be accomplished in the national forests, in the Appalachian and Rocky Mountain forests, where we can grow lumber on a wholesale basis.

Each farm can provide for its own lumber and timber needs. Trees are just as much a crop as wheat, cotton or potatoes or anything else.

There are going to be more and more people living in the cities or living in small places who will see the advantages of living on farms, and you may be quite sure that what you are doing today is going to make for a better-rounded national life.

So let me tell you that you are performing a real service for the future of the country. You are doing a fine job. Go back home to your States and counties and keep up the good work. It has been fine to see you. Many thanks.