396 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 



aud leading farmers and taxpayers inlo tlieir council in order UiaL public 

 sentiment may be crystalized upon some practical road plan that will 

 give the State a system of roads at reasonable cost. We recommend that 

 emphasis be placed upon the secondary road system and the following 

 phases of the subject should be emphasized: 



(a) That the farm-to-market road shall be well drained, well graded, 

 and (when approved by the taxpayers) gravelled. 



(b) That all secondary county roads shall be constructed and main- 

 tained under the authority of the county boards. 



(c) That a portion of the automobile license shall be retained by the 

 counties for use on the secondary road system. 



5. Recommend that the corn acreage reduction, if adopted, be handled 

 through the County Farm Bureau Committees in each county. The policy 

 to be followed to be outlined by the Executive Committee of the Federa- 

 tion in order that the plan may be uniform throughout the State. 



6. Recommend that the convention, so far as possible, outline to the 

 Executive Committee its desire in regard to the extent the State Federa- 

 tion should go in advocating and encouraging National legislation and 

 other national problems of agriculture beyond its present policy of work- 

 ing with and through the American Farm Bureau Federation. 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR N. E. KENDALL 



Mr. Chairman; Ladies and Gentlemen: 



I was in Washington for three days in the month of December, and at a 

 dinner attended by all of the congressional delegation, I undertook to 

 detail to them the deplorable plight of agriculture in Iowa. I know I have 

 been criticized somewhat because I haven't maintained a more optimistic 

 view of the situation. I go occasionally to dinners and banquets where 

 some well-dressed men from the east delivers an address after a very full 

 meal when men are more inclined to be optimistic than at other times, and 

 he tells us that we are past the worst, that we are out of the depression 

 and just ahead of us is the promised land. I wish I could believe that, but 

 I know the situation in Iowa and I know that the agricultural interests of 

 this state have got to have relief, and they have got to have it now. 



I spent two hours trying to impress upon our delegation at Washington 

 the conditions which prevail in Iowa; that men who have been regarded 

 as solvent all through the years that have passed are now in straightened 

 circumstances. My friends, we mine a little in Iowa, we manufacture con- 

 siderably, but our basic industry is agriculture, and the stress through 

 which we are now going doesn't merely involve agriculture, it involves 

 every legitimate business in our state — manufacturing, mining, jobbing, 

 wholesaling — everything is dependent upon the industry in which you are 

 engaged, and I say that there can be no permanent prosperity in the Mis- 

 sissippi valley until those who produce food commodities are enabled to 

 market them at a reasonable margin of profit. 



So that it is not a question entirely of farm profits. I heard a man say 

 the other night that the farmers enjoyed fabulous prices during the W^orld 



