TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 255 



into razor-backs following the woodpeckers that were pecking on the 

 posts around the pasture. 



I have just been handed a note which says that the coal strike has 

 been called off. 



Do you know that is what the people of Iowa were doing during 

 that time. They heard a rapping out in California and Washington 

 and they heard a tapping in Texas and Canada, and they began to 

 follow after strange gods, but most of them have been coming back 

 to I-o-way wiser if poorer men. That was the situation here in 

 the years 1900-1910, but now people are just beginning to realize 

 that we have the greatest state of the Union, just as the governor 

 said ; they are beginning to realize it more now than they ever did 

 before. Iowa is now going at topspeed — in fact, they are going at 

 such a rapid rate of speed that they seldom take time to look back 

 and see how far they are ahead. They are like the Irishman who 

 had taken the wheel of a ship. For three weeks they had been 

 tossed and tumbled by a storm, and at the first sign of calmer 

 weather the captain called Pat to the wheel and he said there were 

 two things he shouldn't forget : First, to head straight for the north 

 star, and second, and on peril of his life, he warned him not to go 

 to sleep. In about two hours the captain returned to find his man 

 leaning against the wheel sound asleep and the ship headed toward 

 the south and ruin. He kicked the Irishman and shook him out of 

 his sleep and angrily demanded to know why he had gone to sleep 

 and permitted the ship to be driven off of its course. He said, "Do 

 you see the north star back here?" The dazed Irishman gradually 

 collected his wits and said, "The north star? Hell, cap, give me an- 

 other one, we passed that an hour ago !" Well, you know that while 

 Iowa was continuously the first to go over the top in matters of war 

 activities, it was an eye-opener to a great many good people. They 

 didn't realize the kind of competition they were up against. And 

 when you stop to think about it, why shouldn't Iowa have been the 

 first state to go over the top ? In fact, she would have had a mighty 

 hard time explaining to posterity if she hadn't been first over the top. 

 Why, the Iowa corn crop alone is worth more than a half billion 

 dollars. But that doesn't mean much to us in these days of billions. 

 We have been accustomed to look at a billion dollars as we do at a 

 bushel of potatoes. How little conception we have as to what a 

 billion dollars is. If you had a dollar for every minute that has 

 elapsed since Christ was born, you would not have a billion dollars 

 yet. A modern machine gun shoots more than 500 bullets per min- 



