478 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



which affects us both. There is the opposition of capitalistic monopoly 

 which affects the farmer as well as it does the laborer, and with all that 

 in common we owe labor a certain degree of protection. The question is 

 this: Can the government protect the laborer in his rights as an in- 

 dividual and as an organization? Is it possible to effect a system of com- 

 pulsory arbitration that will do away with the principle of strikes? 



■ A strike always means forced suffering. It means freezing; it means 

 starvation; it means disorder. Can we in any way avoid that thing? If 

 this government of ours, if this state and other states cannot protect the 

 citizens within that state; if Congress and the President cannot afford 

 adequate protection to all the people and all classes, then this nation — 

 and that includes organized labor, and that means protection against 

 capitalistic monopoly — if that protection cannot locally be given to all 

 the people, then democracy is a failure. 



And if it cannot be given and democracy is a failure it is up to the 

 farmers of the country and organized labor of the country and the 

 commercial organizations of the country to reassemble the government. 

 But if that protection can be afforded, and I contend before you tonight 

 that it can, then I see no reason whatever for any more strikes; and I 

 would favor, along with compulsory arbitration, a law which would guard 

 us against — no, not strikes, for in a way you cannot compel men to work, 

 they have a right to quit when they want to. Let me put it this way: 

 We can have protection against organized strikes. We can have organized 

 anti-strike legislation which should be effective. 



The matter of universal military training is up for consideration and it 

 affects every one of us, more or less. Now, I want to say this: The army 

 officers of the country are trying to put over the compulsory military 

 training bill. The soldiers who served the country and are back in civil 

 life, so far as I have talked with them, are absolutely against any military 

 training bill. 



How is it going to affect the farmer? Is it going to take your boy and 

 my boy away from the farm for six months in the year for two years of 

 his life at the age of nineteen or twenty years, when he is worth more 

 on the farm than anywhere else, and when his labor is needed on the 

 farm. It will tend to draw him away from the farm entirely, and a lot of 

 them will go back into the army. Wasn't it proven in the late war that 

 we had the best soldiers that ever went onto a battle field and trained 

 them in about six months' time? 



We do need, perhaps, to train officers. We do need to have ordnance. 

 We do need to be prepared in many ways, as we were not before; but 

 that preparation can be made without conscripting the boys who aren't 

 yet voters and who are needed at home and who themselves need home 

 protection. 



The crying need of this country today is civic and civil morality. We 

 have got to develop in our national life a civil responsibility, a moral 

 responsibility. We have got to take those things up as public questions, 

 and we have got to see to it that the men who occupy the seats of 

 authority in state and nation are clean men morally. 



