Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1913 — CHRISTIE GIVES A LITTLE ADVICE [ARTICLE]

CHRISTIE GIVES A LITTLE ADVICE

Members of Chamber of Commeriff Are Told by Purdue Man to Advertise Their State. “Advertise Indiana,” suggested Prof.. G. I. Christie in an address before the ways and means committee of the Chamber of Commerce, at Indianapolis. Prof. Christie discussed the relation of the business man to the farmer, and showed that only in. eo-operation between city and country workers can the best interests of the state be conserved. “Today there is only one county which has an exhibition at the state fair,” said ‘T am working to that end, and'hope to see the time when there shall be an agricultural building at the state fair ground, to which every year each county in the state will send an industrial and agricultural exhibition.” The prosperity of the business life was dependent on the prosperity of the farms, said Christie. ‘The business man,” he said, “is interested in the farmer for two reasons; because the farm is the great source of the state’s food supply, and because of the great money returns of which the farm and the farmer is the basis.” The farmer, he said, was an individualist. He lacked the co-opera-tion which the business interests of the cities were able to form in their relations with each other. The chamber of commerce in Indianapolis and other cities, by the establishment of county agricultural agents, which has now been done in many of the counties, he said, could be of great service in bringing the' farmer and ttye business man together. They could help, he said, in stopping the shifting population of the rural districts, many farmers leaving the state and moving to others where the advantages had been demonstrated to them, and leaving the land behind, them in the hands of the younger and uneducated farmer. Prof. Christie pointed out that the farmer must be educated in better management of his farm, and made to see that all the advantages of city life might be transferred to the country, and that his children might receive the same education there as in the city. Not only the increase of his wealth, but the betterment of his social conditions were within the range of the assistance which the chamber of commerce could render to the producer of the state’s, wealth. Prof. Christie said agriculture was formerly the predominant interest of the state, but that the great class of manufacturing interests had been developed in late years. The value of the corn crop this year, he said, would be about $90,000,000. Sixty per cent of the deposits in the outlying banks came from the farm. The city banks had found that a large per cent of their reserve came from the outlying banks.