142 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 



hay every year. If you will figure a little you will see why we have a 

 part of this surplus. They have been replaced, of course, by gasoline. I 

 am satisfied in my own mind as much as I ever was satisfied of anything 

 that the horse is coming back, is going to stay on the farms of America, 

 we can't get along without it. It is our cheapest power, our most reliable 

 power and the horse is coming back to some extent on the streets of the 

 cities of this country, and you men who are interested in the horse busi- 

 ness let me tell you, don't lose your faith in the horse. While our horses 

 have been decreased our cattle also have decreased to the extent of more 

 than two million head. Nearly four million head of sheep have disap- 

 peared and we have almost eight million less hogs than we had two years 

 ago. 



It is too bad for the sake of the Iowa farmer, it is too bad for the sake 

 of the maintenance of the soil fertility of this great state that meat con- 

 sumption in United States has materially decreased. I think it should be 

 increased. I think it will be increased. It is one of our problems as Iowa 

 farmers to encourage the increase of meat consumption. A number of 

 things have entered into its decrease, but perhaps more than any other 

 one factor has been the high price of meat in the retail markets of the 

 country. If you would ask me to analyze and name to you the three things 

 which are most hurting American agriculture today I would name the 

 credit situation, transportation and the high price of retail goods in the 

 country. A situation which will make for five cent hides and ten dollar 

 shoes will wreck the country, and seven or eight cent cattle or six or 

 seven cent cattle and forty cent beef steak cannot continue. But that is 

 exactly what we are up against. It affects consumption most materially. It 

 enters into the railroad problem. 



The problem of the railroads in order to enable them to reduce freight 

 rates is one of reduction in labor costs and the laboring man must live, he 

 must buy clothing, he must buy shoes, he must buy bread and he must buy 

 meat and he gets it on the retail market of the country. Now I am aware 

 that many of our country merchants are just as hard pressed as we 

 farmers are. I am not speaking of them. I am speaking of the conditions 

 which prevail in the cities of this country where the bulk of our labor 

 lives and the wage schedules of which dominate the country. And I tell 

 you candidly that the laboring man who must work in the city and work 

 on the section or in a shop or on a train cannot maintain a decent stand- 

 ard of living at very much less wage than he is now getting. He possibly 

 can take some reduction. But if this spread between the producer and 

 consumer were narrowed, then he could because wages should not prop- 

 erly be measured by dollars and cents so much as they should be meas- 

 ured in commodities which the day's wage will enable the laborer to buy. 



Now about railroad rates and wages. That laborer who lives in the city 

 draws just the same per diem if he is a track man or right of way man, 

 and that is where a great deal of railroad labor is used. He draws the 

 same per diem as the Greek or Italian or Mexican who lives in a box car 

 along the railroad track, who would not live in a decent house if he had 

 it and who sends every dollar of his wages out of this country just as fast 

 as he earns it. If I were to make any suggestions requiring changes in our 



