Farmers' Week in AgricuJlund (hdlcge. 107 



assemblies the attendance sometimes readied from 800 to 3,000 people. 

 At the 66 institutes I visited I delivered 121 lectures to 27,145 people, 

 making an average of 220 at each meeting. I visited 52 corn shows 

 during the fall and judged at 50 of them. I have traveled somewhere 

 between ten and fifteen thousand miles to do the work. 



Since we have been able to respond in only about one-half of the 

 cases where meetings w^ere called for, we believe it ought to set the 

 people of Missouri to thinking. Now, I don't often make political 

 speeches, Init you can call a part of my speech tonight political if you 

 want to; but 1 will say to you that a part of it will be such that the 

 politicians dare not make. I am not hunting for any office and I am 

 certain that no office is hunting for me, so I am going to say what 1 

 believe to be true. I am going to hew as near to the line as I know 

 liow and let the chips fall wliere tlicy may. I am going to say to you 

 that I believe Missouri is practicing a false economy — a dangerously 

 false economy. 



The political speech I am going to make now is to say I don't be- 

 lieve Missouri people are paying enough taxes — in other words, we are 

 not getting into our public treasury as much revenue as we ought to 

 have there. 1 will say to you that if you want to go to a town that is a 

 live town you cannot go and not help pay the price. If you want to go 

 to a town with a low tax rate you will go to a dead one every time. You 

 sliow me a county with a low tax rate and I will show you a county 

 that if it has a court house at all it is a disgrace to the community. You 

 show me a state with an extremely low tax rate and I will show you a 

 state with public highways of which the people ought to be ashamed. 

 Now I know of states that I believe are paying too much taxes. Per- 

 liaps not that, but the money is not economically administered. Mis- 

 souri is getting more for every dollar she spends than any state in the 

 Union, but we are not spending enough. I don't know what I am ac- 

 complishing for the State of Missouri, but in the work I am doing thou- 

 sands upon thousands are listening to what I have to say. Thousands 

 are requesting me to come and talk to them about the farm. But if 1 

 eould be the means of adding one grain of corn to every ear in a Mis- 

 souri corn crop I wonder if I would earn my pay. If I could be th" 

 means of adding one grain to every ear, ■ and the corn was worth 50 

 cents a bushel, it would hire your "Missouri Corn Man" at the present 

 rate for just forty-five years (But I am not going to Ix' on the jol) 

 that long.) Then su[)[K)se you could liave in addition to a corn man a 

 dairyman, an orchard man, a i)oultry man, and a live stock man — in 

 other w"vds, have five men who travel constantly over the State doing 



