REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 411 



ADDRESS OF DR. R. A. PEARSON 

 PRESIDENT IOWA STATE COLLEGE, AMES 



The subject assigned to me is "Keeping Pace With Progressive Agri- 

 culture." This may be a hint that the farmer's agriculture must keep 

 apace of the times. I suppose no one would object to that hint. But 

 it may mean something far more than that — that this nation is to keep 

 pace with the aid of progressive agriculture, and in that I verily do be- 

 lieve. 



In this country today, with the great abundance of food such as we 

 have never seen before, with a great supply of raw materials, with more 

 gold than our country ever had before within its borders, there is trouble 

 and distress. Business is slack. I saw a few months ago a railroad 

 being torn up — a well-known railroad, the steel to be sold on the second- 

 hand market; factories all over this nation are closed or running on part 

 time. Normally in the United States at this time of the year we have 

 about one and one-half million people out of employment, but carefully 

 prepared estimates a little while ago showed that the number was at 

 least four million out of employment. 



The public is beginning to appreciate that prosperity in this country 

 cannot come back as long as agriculture is in its present situation. The 

 farmers of our nation are not buying. How can they when a bushel of 

 corn will purchase on the market less than half of what it would purchase 

 before the war? The purchasing power of a bushel of corn is le^s than 

 50 per cent of normal; the purchasing power of a hog not very much 

 better. And, worse yet, our taxes have increased and they have to be 

 paid out of a reduced income, and interest and debts have to be paid, 

 leaving a smaller portion of that reduced income for the purchase of 

 necessary supplies. And so the simple fact is that the great farming 

 population of our nation, about 40 per cent, is not able to buy, and the 

 little towns have slowed down in their business until it is almost stag- 

 nant, and the larger cities and transportation companies are feeling the 

 situation accordingly. 



But conditions, friends, are getting better. We have gone through the 

 worst of it, and we can see a good many rays of light coming up over the 

 horizon. A little more than a year ago the average index numbers of 

 wholesale prices was 276, as compared with 100 before the war. A few 

 weeks ago that had reduced to 151. It is now possible for farmers with 

 the products that they have to sell to buy the normal quantity of some 

 of the things that they have to buy, and in looking over a very interesting 

 official report I found a few of the articles that can be purchased in 

 normal quantity with agricultural products at present prices. I will tell 

 you what they are — you may want to buy some: overalls, dung-forks, 

 brooms, wooden buckets, kitchen chairs, coffee, sugar, and one or two 

 other things. So that at last a few weeks ago we had come to the time 

 when a farmer might put on a new suit of overalls, clean out his stable, 

 sweep the barn floor, go in and sit down on a kitchen chair, and put his 

 feet up on a wooden bucket and drink a cup of coffee sweetened with 

 sugar, and feel natural again. 



But I suppose, if I may continue the dark side of the picture just a 



