There are some people in this country who have forgotten that without farms there would be no factories. There are some people who must know that wit… - Lyndon B. Johnson

When I came to Washington in 1932, corporation profits were nonexistent. They had a loss that year of $3,400 million. In 1942, 10 years later, we got it up to $9½ billion. In 1952, 10 years later, we got it up to $17.2 billion. In 1962 we got it up to $24.6 billion. In 1963 we got it up to $27.1 billion, and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers tells me we are not only not going to lose $3,400 million this year, as we did 32 years ago when I came here, but our profits this year are going to be $31 billion after taxes--these high taxes. Labor has gotten about $52 billion more in wages than they got in 1961 Their wages have increased $51 billion or $52 billion in 3 years. Corporation profits have increased from a $3.4 billion loss in 1932 to $31 billion after taxes. Now, those groups--the capitalists who make the investments, the managers who manage it, and the workers who produce it-have got to be concerned about these taxeaters. There is an increasing proof that we can at long last break this unemployment stalemate that has marked our economic life month in and month out for several years.

I asked Congress to extend the supply management programs of the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965, and I asked them to extend it this year. Chairman Poage tells me that his committee will give consideration to these recommendations shortly. We hope that with his assistance, and with Walter Mondale's assistance, with the help of all the Minnesota delegation, we can get permanent authority. The farmer should not be asked to grow more than the market can take at a fair price. I have asked the Congress to continue the direct payment programs of the 1965 act-they are the difference between profit and loss for many farmers each year. I have asked the Congress to extend the Food for Freedom Act for an additional 3 years--because it is right for this Nation, whose sons came from many nations, to try to help hungry people eat when we have an abundance--and because I think it is good business for our farmers to help build new markets for our products in other lands around the world. I have asked the Congress to authorize a National Food Bank--a security reserve for wheat, feed grains, soybeans--which would give the farmer higher prices, protect the consumer from food scarcities and shortages, and provide the Government with an emergency food "cushion" in reaching supply-management decisions so we would not get caught short when we had a bad estimate. I have asked the Congress to find the ways to give the farmer more bargaining power in the marketplace. Our working people and our good laboring friends in this country have not met all their needs or their desires. They still have many objectives and goals that we want to help them reach. But the reason the farmer's income does not compare favorably with a laboring man's income is one reason, primarily, in my judgment: Labor has bargaining power; the farmer has none. If you are to continue to pay the prices that industry charges and sets, if you are to continue to pay the wages that American workers are entitled to get, you are going to have to be put on an equal basis with industry and labor in bargaining power. As you have so many times in the past, the Farmers Union has joined with us to help us to work, strive, and fight in order to get bargaining power for the American farmer. Finally, I have asked the Congress for the programs to bring parity of opportunity to the rural children in America; to give them better elementary education; to give them better library facilities; to give them better transportation; to give us better farm credit; to give us more rural jobs; to give us decent housing; to give us adequate diets, with adequate consumer protection for the housewives; to give us the chance to lead a full and productive life.

As Winston Churchill once said: "Civilization will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless mankind unites together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a power before which barbaric forces will stand in awe." We, as well as our adversaries, must stand in awe before the power our craft has created and our wisdom must labor to control. In every area of national strength America today is stronger than it has ever been before. It is stronger than any adversary or combination of adversaries. It is stronger than the combined might of all the nations in the history of the world. And I confidently predict that strength will continue to grow more rapidly than the might of all others.