REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 401 



than 200 million dollars. I was on an Illinois Central dining car some time 

 after that and there on the back of the menu was an open letter to the 

 public signed by the president of the Illinois Central road who said that 

 the valuation fixed by the Interstate Commerce Commission was vastly 

 less than the real value of the railroad. I am referring to that as simply 

 illustrating the method pursued by one industry in our country to escape 

 the fair proportion of the burdens of government. What do they propose? 

 They propose one value for rate-making purposes and a vastly smaller 

 value for tax-fixing purposes. 



I believe you do not agree to that method. Anyhow, I am going to say 

 this, as long as I occupy my present position I do not intend to allow that 

 transparent hokus-pokus to be perpetrated upon the people of Iowa. We 

 are all proud of our country; we are all proud of our state; these taxes 

 have got to be raised, and I am sorry that the congress in discharge of 

 what they believed their duty to be removed taxes on excess profits. I 

 believe that the men who derive excess profits should pay taxes upon 

 them. And now what a spectacle they have presented, when they have 

 struck down the tax on luxuries and intend to put a sales tax on all of the 

 necessities of life that the average must pay. 



I leave you this situation. You keep in communication constantly with 

 the men who make your laws and the men who execute them. 



I thank you very much indeed! 



ADDRESS OF J. R. HOW^ARD, PRESIDENT AMERICAN FARM 

 BUREAU FEDERATION 



It is a great pleasure to be present today at this, your third annual con- 

 vention of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation. It was just a little more 

 than three years ago that the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation had its origin 

 at Marshalltown. It was less than three years since first steps were taken 

 at Ithaca, New York, toward the organization of the American Farm 

 Bureau Federation, and not two years since the National organization 

 became permanent. 



It is my purpose today to review briefly three of the lines of work which 

 the American Farm Bureau Federation has been doing in order that you 

 may judge whether or not our stewardship of fifty cents out of your 

 membership fees has been well invested. 



I— COOPERATIVE MARKETING 



The cooperative marketing movement is a protest expressed in action 

 against excessive margins and distributive costs. It is no new thing. It 

 has been successfully carried on in European nations for a hundred years 

 or more. Within less than fifty years Denmark has thrown off the yoke of 

 the agricultural economic oppression through cooperative marketing and 

 has so reduced distributive costs and profits that the producer receives 

 72 cents of the consumer's dollar, and through cooperative marketing has 

 rebuilded her entire national prosperity. 



For years there have been efforts in this country along cooperative 

 marketing lines. Some of these have been failures, others successful. 



