US Presidency
1932

The original purpose of the Farm Board was to strengthen the efforts of the farmer to establish his own farmer-owned, farmer controlled marketing agencies. It has greatly succeeded in this purpose, even in these times of adversity. The departure of the Farm Board from its original purpose by making loans to farmers ' cooperatives to preserve prices from panic served an emergency, but such an action in normal times is absolutely destructive of the farmers ' own interest. We still have vast problems to solve in agriculture. But no power on Earth can restore prices except by restoration of the general recovery and by restoration of markets. Every measure that we have taken looking to general recovery is of benefit to the farmer. There is no relief to the farmer by extending governmental bureaucracy to control his production and thus to curtail his liberties, nor by subsidies that bring only more bureaucracy and their ultimate collapse. And I shall continue to oppose them.