PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 557 



joined to celebrate the Federated Co-operative Shippers of Iowa, 

 and we certainly welcome you to our midst. 



After this organization had been formed and started to function, 

 the man who had been elected secretary of the Corn Belt Meat 

 Producers' Association became ill, and found that it was necessary 

 for him to leave this rigid climate and go to one more mild to re- 

 cover his health, and he handed in his resignation to the board of 

 directors. The board of directors then began to look around for 

 a secretary for the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association to fill 

 the vacancy that had been made by the resignation of J. J. Ryan, 

 who was the first secretary of this organization. In their scrim- 

 mage, they ran onto a man who then wasn't as old in years as he 

 is now, who with his father and his brother and some of his rela- 

 tives, was connected up here on Eleventh and Walnut streets, I be- 

 lieve, publishing what was then and is now known as Wallaces' 

 Farmer, and they decided after they looked this man over that he 

 would make a pretty good secretary if he would accept the posi- 

 tion, and so it was offered to him and he accepted the position, and 

 for about sixteen years that gentleman filled that position with this 

 organization as secretary. 



After a while we had a national election, and, you know, some- 

 times those national elections change the political aspect of things 

 in Washington, and it becomes necessary to make some changes. 

 Now, of course, I happen to belong to the party that had to give 

 way (Laughter), unfortunately, but what I was going to say was 

 this, that the President, in looking around over this great United 

 States, decided that he needed a secretary down there — in fact, sev- 

 eral of them, just as the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association 

 needed a secretary some sixteen or seventeen years ago, and so he 

 began to look around for secretaries and finally located one out here 

 in Des Moines, in the very spot where the Corn Belt Meat Produc- 

 ers' Association located their secretary when they needed one. (Ap- 

 plause.) Well, of course, we were loath to give up our secretary, 

 because as an organization we felt we needed him, and we have 

 never changed our minds so far as that is concerned, but then, of 

 course, we felt this way about that, that possibly he could serve us 

 in a broader field if he went to Washington. We just had faith 

 enough in our secretary to believe that he wouldn't go back on us 

 if we let him go to Washington, if we gave him a leave of absence 

 and permitted him to go to Washington and help us there; and so 

 we have gathered here tonight, I feel, to pay a tribute to the man 



