614 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



should come to Iowa — his day is past on this soil and those who deal 

 with the soil; and that is what I felt over there, and so I was in favor 

 and fought for the new cattle pavilion that will make stock sales possible 

 in- this state almost weekly. I worked for your Farm Bureaus, and for 

 your appropriations in the Thirty-seventh general assembly, and some 

 of the men, some of the farmers who stood on the floor of the Thirty- 

 seventh general assembly and fought the Farm Bureau movement and 

 the law providing for appropriations, I saw them at the state convention 

 of Farm Bureaus here the other day. (Laughter.) They are welcome 

 there because they have been converted. And in the Thirty-eighth gen- 

 eral assembly I was glad to work for the law which changed the "may" 

 into a "shall" in favor of the Fai'm Bureau legislation. I was glad to 

 introduce and to fight for a vocational educational bill which permits 

 Iowa to have its share of the federal aid for the creation of, and the 

 paying of, teachers in agriculture throughout these great consolidated 

 schools which are being established over the state of Iowa. And so on 

 down the line. And speaking of Farm Bureaus, what a wonderful organ- 

 ization that has become! I have seen it advance from a few counties 

 until it covered the state. Now this great organization is molded into 

 a State Federation of Farm Bureaus that is not only going to look after 

 market conditions in every county, but is going to tell you where to find 

 your seed and how to treat it, and how to cultivate and care for it; the 

 Farm Bureau will not only do those things and help you in your local 

 marketing, but it is to be the nucleus for the most painstaking, scientific 

 investigation of your needs, and I believe it will be the nucleus that will 

 bring to your interests men of great scientific attainments. In your 

 business you deal with the railroads, you deal with foreign relations, you 

 deal with the retailer, the manufacturer; you are inter-related in the 

 whole life of this state, and you ought to have and must have to compete 

 in this great complex age — you must bring to your particular interests 

 the most scientific and effective help that can be found in the nation. 

 (Applause.) You have a right to it for more reasons than one, but for 

 the great reason that this wondrous nation of ours, this America which 

 we love and which we intend to defend and preserve, that great frame- 

 work of government, that is found in the last analysis, as we all know, 

 in the soil, depends on men who live with their feet upon the ground 

 and the sky over their heads, working with their hands to produce the 

 necessiites of life for the nation, and while doing that forming nuclei in 

 the farm home, with less tendency to radicalism, with more hope in and 

 for the future of America in these complex times than any other class of 

 our citizenship. And life has become complex, hasn't it? So complex 

 in your business, and every other, and in your relations with others — 

 so different from the old life! Why, you know, I used to farm, myself, 

 back in the days before the railroads were as numerous as they are now. 

 My father and I have driven hogs on the hoof from Davis county down 

 to Alexandria, Mo. — ninety miles; and father also carried mails overland 

 from Bloomfield to Fairfield, as a boy of 14, on the back of old Jim, 

 swimming the Des Moines river three times a week. That was the day 

 of the cradle, the day of primitive farming, the day of individualism, the 



