Excerpts of the President's News Conference

The Cabinet spent considerable time this morning considering the agricultural situation, with which we are all pretty familiar. There is one phase of it, perhaps, that might be kept in mind, and that is the organization of that $10,000,000 Agricultural Credit Corporation. Now that there has been a failure to pass the diversification bill known as the Norbeck-Burtness bill, I am going to ask this Agricultural Credit Corporation to function in the same way that the provisions of that bill would have functioned: that is, to assist farmers in diversification. That organization was created as the result of a conference that I called here on the 4th of February, and the bankers and businessmen of the northwest, middlewest, and down as far as New York, at once joined and raised a $10,000,000 fund which of course can be supplemented by a loan from the War Finance Corporation, about $20,000,000 or $30,000,000 more, which ought to enable them to assist very materially in diversification. Dr. Coulter who formulated the plan that was embodied in the Norbeck-Burtness bill is the Vice-President of the new Agricultural Credit Corporation, and I am sure that he can be very helpful in transferring some of the activities of this corporation into the field that would have been taken up by the Government, had that other bill passed.

PRESS: Mr. President, is Agricultural Corporation the exact name?

PRESIDENT: The Agricultural Credit Corporation is the corporate name.

PRESS: Does this contemplate an increase in the capital of the organization?

PRESIDENT: NO, the War Finance Corporation has been designated to help out the banks, and when this Agricultural Credit Corporation was formed it was expected that those farmers who needed assistance and advice and counsel would resort to this corporation for aid in that direction.