TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 461 



Second, there is a large number of conservatives. They say, "Now, 

 look here; what's the use of fighting about this? Let's get together and 

 talk it over. When we talk it over we will find they are the same sort 

 of people we are and we can iron out all our difficulties." They are the 

 ones who want to confer with the railroad, and with the packers, and 

 thresh things over. I have been in conference with the railroads and the 

 packers and the commission men and other interests for twenty years, at 

 different times. I can sit down the night before any conference is held 

 and write an accurate account of it as it will be held the day following. 

 And I would do it without hesitation and stake my reputation that it would 

 prove a fair report of the conference. 



The good fellows who want to get together find these other men are 

 nice fellows, that they are exactly the same sort of men we are. They 

 are gentlemen. But while they are patting you on the back they will be 

 playing their side of the game, always, and you forget you aren't playing 

 your side of it, because you haven't gone there loaded and ready to fight. 

 This is a business proposition. 



The third class are the practical men who know what they want to do; 

 men who have prepared themselves to represent their interests and the 

 interests of their fellow members. They are just as decent as the other 

 fellows but they are standing all the time for what they went there for, 

 and that is the basis you will have to go on if this organization is going 

 to get anywhere. 



I have said in the paper and many times publicly that I regard this 

 farm bureau movement as by all odds the most promising, the most suc- 

 cessful movement of farmers ever started in the United States. I had 

 lunch today with a man representing one of the great New York maga- 

 zines. He came out here to learn about this farmers' movement, and he 

 had a sort of notion that the farm bureau movement was something of the 

 bolshevic order. He had traveled all over the world. He had been in 

 France and everywhere, except in this Central West, I guess, but he 

 seemed to have that sort of idea. I tried to set him straight. 



You have made a wonderful start. You have raised a big sum of 

 money. You have a thoroughly representative membership of the best 

 people on the face of the earth. You have done a big job and done it 

 mighty well. Now you have got to get down to business. You have got 

 to make sure that you deliver the goods, that you live up to the reputa- 

 tion you have made for yourselves. 



You will do all these things if you get down on a business basis, study- 

 ing the game, hiring expert men to do the things you cannot do your- 

 selves — and there will be a lot of them — statisticians, clerks, expert econ- 

 omists, set up an organization that will go into railroad rates, railroad 

 operation, merchant marine and our relations with foreign countries. 



All of these things have a tremendously vital influence upon all this 

 western farming country that is going to make or unmake the farming of 

 these western states. You are the only farmers that are truly the repre- 

 sentatives of the farmers of this great com belt, and to protect these 

 interests you must call about you the most expert, thoroughly trained 

 men that you can find in the United States. I thank you for your courtesy. 



