Your telegram would have received instant reply but for my absence from the city.

I trust it is not necessary to say that I deeply deplore the tragic situation that confronts our cotton and tobacco farmers, and am in favor of resorting to every possible measure that promises relief.

To work and to pray for the prosperity and the happiness of the farmer is no evidence of special wisdom or virtue. Any man with sense enough to be allowed to run at large must know that, not only for the welfare, but the very life of the Nation is dependent upon a prosperous rural population. If the farmer is allowed to go to the devil, hell will soon be the portion of us all.

I think the Federal Reserve Board made a fundamental mistake in its interpretation of the present crisis in the cotton market. I thoroughly agree with the Board in its contention that it cannot interfere with the law of supply and demand. Other things have interfered with this law. Today the demand for cotton is greater than the supply. There is today a shivering cry all around the world for more cotton than the world contains. The International financial machinery necessary to transfer the cotton from those who have it over here to those who need it over there is temporarily out of gear. It is the duty of the Federal Board to assist the farmer to hold his cotton, not from the market, but for the market.

The mills in this country are abundantly supplied with cotton and are distressed to find a market for their output. The world sorely needs this output but for the international financial machinery necessary to the transfer of the goods from the mills to the consumers has temporarily broken down. The exchange market is in such a condition that France, Italy and Germany are today actually paying more for cotton on a basis of 22 cents than they paid last year on a basis of 36 cents. Today, for the equivalent of a dollar in their own currency, France gets about 60 cents worth of cotton, Italy about 33 cents worth and Germany 10 cents worth.

There can be no active demand for cotton until this international tangle is straightened out. It results that somebody must hold the cotton. Every consideration of justice and sound economics requires that the cotton be held by the men who produce it. If it is not held by the farmer it will be held by men who contribute nothing to the production or the manufacture of cotton but are simply lucky enough to have ready money on hand.

For these reasons I think the Federal Reserve Board and the Congress ought to be urged to render every possible assistance to the farmer to hold the cotton until the world that is in such tragic need of cotton is in a position to take it. It cannot be too often repeated and emphasized that the supply of cotton is not equal to the human demand for cotton, but the trouble is that the law of supply and demand is not operative because of the dislocation of the international financial machinery.

It would be the acme of cruelty and unwisdom to force the cotton on a market that is absolutely dead. The only hope for the farmer and for the country is to hold the cotton until the market again becomes a thing of life.

Not only the Government, but all private individuals should lend a helping hand to the farmer in this emergency. This is not charity- it is the very best business policy--for if the cotton crop should be dumped on a dead market it would ruin as many merchants and manufacturers as farmers. As Patrick Henry said, in the days of the American Revolution: “The situation is one in which if we do not all hang together we will hang separately.”

Therefore let every community mobilize its own assets and extend to the farmer every possible aid. Of course, debts must be paid, but every indulgence consistent with staying out of bankruptcy should be granted. This indulgence should be granted by the manufacturers to the jobber, by the jobber to the merchant, by the merchant to the farmer.

I do not believe in anything that savors of force or intimidation. Night riding and gin burning are as silly as they are wicked. The best remedy is the common sense and mutual sympathy of the people in the presence of a common disaster.

I regret that I cannot concur in the suggestion to call a special session of the Legislature for the purpose of having a law enacted to compel a reduction of cotton acreage by law. I am profoundly certain the General Assembly of North Carolina would not pass any such law it it should be convened. In my Inaugural Address as Governor I stated that if I were the Czar of North Carolina instead of the Governor, I would issue an edict that any man who was found importing into this state any beef or bacon, meal or flour, grain or hay, should be forthwith hanged without trial by jury and without benefit of clergy. This would be a constructive rather than a destructive remedy, and the General Assembly would be more apt to enact such a law than one penalizing the farmer for growing too much cotton. It is as plain as day that if the farmers of the cotton belt would produce their own food and feed crops, then they would always be in a position to adequately deal with an emergency like the one that now confronts us; but so long as cotton farmers line up in a fight of this kind with empty cribs and smoke houses and with a debt on the crop for food and feed supplies, they are as helpless as the man who goes into a battle with an empty gun in his hands.

It is wholly unnecessary to call the General Assembly together to pass a law granting delays in the payment of taxes. The State levies no taxes on property this year to run the State government, and as to local taxes, our sheriffs can be relied upon to grant every indulgence consistent with the actual necessities of the local communities.

I have written you at length because I am deeply interested in the subject. I believe that by throwing into the breach all the courage, all the common sense and all the common sympathy of our people we can substantially improve the distressing situation that today confronts us.