drop and the topsoil to blow away, the land values will disappear
with the water and the soil. People on the farms will drift into
the nearby cities; the cities will have no farm trade and the
workers in the city factories and stores will have no jobs.
Property values in the cities will decline. If, on the other hand,
the farms within that area remain as farms with better water supply
and no erosion, the farm population will stay on the land and
prosper and the nearby cities will prosper too. Property values
will increase instead of disappearing. That is why it is worth our
while as a nation to spend money in order to save money.

I have used the argument in relation only to a small area. It holds
good in its effect on the nation as a whole. Every state in the
drought area is now doing and always will do business with every
state outside it. The very existence of the men and women working
in the clothing factories of New York, making clothes worn by
farmers and their families; of the workers in the steel mills in
Pittsburgh, in the automobile factories of Detroit, and in the
harvester factories of Illinois, depend upon the farmers' ability
to purchase the commodities they produce. In the same way it is the
purchasing power of the workers in these factories in the cities
that enables them and their wives and children to eat more beef,
more pork, more wheat, more corn, more fruit and more dairy
products, and to buy more clothing made from cotton, wool and
leather. In a physical and a property sense, as well as in a
spiritual sense, we are members one of another.

I want to make it clear that no simple panacea can be applied to
the drought problem in the whole of the drought area. Plans must
depend on local conditions, for these vary with annual rainfall,