Report of Missouri Farmers'' Week. 81 



and of the great city? If you ever felt that lonesomeness it was 

 cured by a trip where you could see nature in its operation. So 

 we went out to the Zoological Park, and just a little story that 

 happened as we were going out: There were four men together; 

 we all posed as bankers; I was among them, and I acted like a 

 banker, too, and on going out to the park we did not know how 

 to get there, so we asked the policeman. He told us to take the 

 subway car and go to the end of the line, and then we were at the 

 Zoological Park. As we went down the stairway there was a 

 man there with a carriage, a two-seated rig, and he spoke to us 

 very gently, and we asked him where the entrance was to the 

 Zoological Park. He said, "It is down there about three- 

 quarters of a mile," and "I take people down there; I would 

 like to haul you down there." We asked, "What will you 

 charge?" "Well," said he, "I will take you down for a quarter 

 apiece." We thought that a pretty good bargain and traded. 

 He loaded us into the wagon and on the way took us down a 

 road and in a back way, and finally unloaded us at the adminis- 

 tration building, but on the way my friend up here from Salis- 

 bury — he is a pretty good joker, too — reached over and tapped 

 the fellow on the shoulder and asked, "Mister, got any Illinois 

 hill-billies in this park?" He thought he was jollying the driver a 

 little bit, but that fellow had us worked all right, and when we got 

 out of the carriage and looked around we saw the main entrance 

 to the park within fifty steps of where we got off the car. I 

 said to the boys, "Maybe no hill-billies in this park but there are 

 four suckers." 



I went over there, traveling 3,100 miles lo talk to those 

 people, advise them as it were for thirty minutes, and they paid 

 the freight. That speech cost them $4 a minute, and I have 

 thought ever since that it was not worth it. But anyway, I 

 was on the route from there with some mighty big guns. I was 

 trying to get away with it. I made the first speech in the 

 afternoon and James J. Hill made the next one and Dr. George 

 Vincent of the University of Minnesota made the next one, 

 and with the three of us together we got the American Bankers' 

 Association to appoint a committee on agricultural develop- 

 ment. One of the greatest organizations in all of this country 

 recognized the movement that you and I are trying to promul- 

 gate. So that, when we all pull together — the college professor, 

 the merchant and the lawyer, the doctor, the farmer, the banker 

 and the institute lecturer, and every man and every woman 



