190 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 



follow. Encourage it, put up your prizes. I can't tell you how to do It. 

 You men are experienced along that line. I have had men come to me a 

 hundred times and tell me how to run the state fair; I have been told by 

 a thousand different ones how they could make a success. When I get out 

 there and see the multiplicity of attractions and departments, I make up 

 my mind these men who are actually responsible for this, getting that 

 thing going, having it fixed and getting it out and all over in ten days is 

 absolutely a science far far beyond me. That is the fair man's business. 

 I don't want to tell him how to do it. The fair business is your business, 

 you have the same thing in each county. A man has to be a genius to 

 make a success of a fair. I am satisfied nothing could come between the 

 county agricultural fair and the Farm Bureau, that your interests are in 

 common. You should co-operate, and I am sure if I can help you I will 

 be glad to do it. 



I would like to answer to some extent things brought up by Mr. Wallace, 

 — not answer them but second them. One is marketing. He suggested 

 that these farmers must take hold and we must take hold of this question 

 of marketing. No question about it. Every one of us that own a piece of 

 land have known that every school house built, every road built and every 

 kind of improvement in the community or on that farm added to the value 

 of the farm continually, but we gave but very little consideration to this 

 question of marketing. We were speculators in land until it reached a 

 point where we can't expect any particular advance or any great advance 

 in these lands, then the old speculative income value of these lands ceased. 

 How many of you want these lands at their present income when you get 

 down and figure this investment or what the value is. That is the propo- 

 sition that faces the farmer like a stone wall, and we are not going to 

 move again in this state until the farmer gets his expenses on a par 

 with his income, when he is able to show a profit on his investment. Some- 

 how he keeps things going but he must get back to the basis now where 

 he is going to give consideration to his earnings from that farm, to the 

 income that farm produces. 



And these booms we had two years ago, I think the experience most 

 men had with that boom two years ago it has brought them to their senses 

 at this time, and it is a question now whether anybody is going to get 

 away with any velvet on that proposition, and here is that mortgage that 

 has got to be lifted; how is he going to get it out of 25 cent corn and 20 

 cent oats. The question is solve this proposition so this product will 

 bring what it costs to raise it; if we don't how long do you expect the 

 thing to continue. In Iowa men are optimists. I am an optimist, so are 

 you. After the war it took eleven to thirteen years to get back, after the 

 civil war, from the high point of prices and cost of production to the 

 lowest, and here after fifty or sixty years of civilization and progress and 

 development and enlightenment we had a war and with all that intelli- 

 gence and with all that wealth and the stability of thought, large enough 

 for the settling of the difficulties of the world, we come back home and we 

 fell off of the roof, went back from the very peak of production of prices 

 and cost of production to the very depths in six months. It merely shows 

 that we have been altogether too much going on as individualists, all grasp- 



