The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-03
NORTHERN FARMERS ENJOY UNEQUALLeD PROSPERITY UNDER
 THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION
Gain of s, 900 100000 In Farm Products is Shown In First Three Years of Presidents Ter-.,r Wheat Gain is 800 Per Cent

measures resulted in raising the price of cotton from 5 1-2c to 12 ,3-4c and thus saved the southern farmers from ruin, THEY DID NOT BRING COT TON INTO THE LIST OF CROPS THE VALUE OF WHICH HAS IN- CREASED DURING THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION
 The same crowd that tried in vain to raise this issue of sectionalism will try to make out that the billion dol- lar gain scored by our farm products values in the past four years has no signiticance-that so far as the United States Government is concerned it IS in the last degree accidental indeed almost reprehensible. All this great gain, we will be told, is not in any sense the achievement of the admin istration, but wholly the result of the European war. The sun and the rain, we will be eloquently reminded, grew the crops, and the chancel- leries of Europe, not the Wilson ad- ministration, brought the situation that has boosted our export trade. But granting that the administration did not create the situation, it may suc- cessfully be maintained that it saved the situation.
 ( When the Great War broke and the country was threatened with an un- precedented financial disaster, it was the administration, not the chancel- leries of Europe nor yet the junta of Wall Street, that saved us from the woes of a panic. It was the Admin istration that came to the rescue of our oceanIborne commerce with measures for government war risk insurance; the administration that has underwrittepo,le rehabilitation of our merchant marine by the passage of the shipping bill. It was the Administration that kept us from slipping into the vertex of war in those dark days of August, 1914. when the world was flushed and de- lirious with the fever of battle; it has been the Administration that has maintained our neutrality inviolate throughout the two years tEat have elapsed since then. It was the Ad- min1stration that kept us from blun- tunate Mexico.
 While under the Wilson Adminis- tration fewer special favors have II under any preceding administration, more has been accomplished to pro- mote a nd boost legitimate business, big. and little, urban and rural than was accomplished by any half dozen preceding administrations.
 But for the painstaking efforts of the Administration to maintain our neutrality and to keep clear the channels of commerce, where now would be that extra billion dollars that has just gone to the credit of the American farmer? With their surplus grain locked up in their granares, and with both their saw ing and their sense in requisition for the prosecution of a wasteful and unnecessary war, our farmers would indeed have cause to ponder on the amazing difference in aspect between Opportunity seized and Opportunity wasted. As it is, however, they have their extra billion In hand, with no immediate danger of having it tax ed away from them for the prosecu- ton of war, or of having it shrink in their hands under the blighting in- fuence of financial disaster
 The European war created a sit uation that offered opportunity; the Wilson administration seized tho op- portunity. There, in a nutshell, is the answer to the vail that our pres ent prosperity is purely accidental. It would be just as pertinent to urge that the fact that we are not now at war with Germany or Mexico is pure lJ accidental, when all the world knows that war has been avoided onl.' by the most skilful, persistent and patient endeavor. When the European war came it was in the power of the Administration to make the most Of the i'll wind and maintain neutrality in the hope of doing civil ization good turn when the time for reconstruction came, not to line the United States up in the trenches with the belligerents. Our present peace and comfort, our present prosperity, including the farmers eytra billion dollars is due to the wise and resolute choice then made.
 The Danish steamer Frederik VII. ,ho1lpd froo, Naw York to Conepha-