570 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



farmers have been fleeced out of hundreds of millions of dollars by this 

 well-directed drive against farm products and live stock which has re- 

 sulted in demoralized markets for the last six months, and who has 

 been benefited? The packer, the speculator and the retailer, but 

 scarcely a bit to the consumer. And will the attorney general or some of 

 his aids please name one manufactured article that the farmer buys 

 on the market that has been reduced in price by this widely advertised 

 drive against the high cost of living? This, then, being true, is it not 

 about time that the government square itself with the farmer by either 

 reducing the prices of the things he must buy or assist him in securing 

 for his products prices that will be on a parity with the products of the 

 factories, the forest and the mine? 



Let us now turn for a few minutes to take a sort of retrospective 

 view of your association as it is the proper season of the year for all 

 to take stock and find where we stand. During 1917 and 1918 the time 

 of your officers was so taken up in war activities and other important 

 matters and there were so many demands made upon the farmers that 

 but little attention was given to building up your association or increas- 

 ing its membership, but I am glad to state to you that the past year has 

 been one of especial activities, in building up and increasing the member- 

 ship of your association. It has experienced a most healthy and vigorous 

 growth and had the weather not been so unfavorable for pushing the 

 membership drive during the early summer and late fall months your 

 organization would have shown almost a miraculous growth. 



We were unable to secure any assistance in the field work until the 

 latter part of August, when Mr. Clarence Pickard, of Indianola, was 

 finally secured and took up the work along with myself, and when we 

 consider the many delays caused by rain and bad roads certainly a 

 very creditable showing has been made. A good, strong membership has 

 been established in some ten or twelve counties where hitherto we have 

 not been organized, besides a number of counties have been worked 

 for renewals and new members, and in most of these counties we secured 

 a very representative and satisfactory membership. This is the logical 

 time to push your association, the farmers are in the proper mood to 

 organize them, they feel the urgent necessity for organization and closer 

 co-operation. Your association has made a splendid record in the past 

 and it appeals to them from the standpoint of securing definite results, 

 and it is largely a question of putting men in the field to wait upon the 

 farmers and secure their memberships, as hundreds of them are wait- 

 ing for an opportunity to join this association, so I would suggest that 

 you elect a president who can give his entire attention to this work, 

 and aside from this you should secure at least three more men who can go 

 out into the general field work and round up the memberships in the 

 various counties where you are not yet represented. If such a program 

 as this is put on and pushed the coming year, your association will come 

 under the wire at the next annual meeting with its membership twice 

 doubled and representation in most of the counties in the state. 



