626 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



talk with Samuel Gompers, met two major generals in the smoking com- 

 partment, and also met the secretary of the peace legation in Europe — a 

 young lad that had with him a book where all of those who signed the 

 treaty of peace also signed their names for him to preserve. 



The power of an idea was illustrated to me on one of these journeys. 

 You know, Emerson says that the creation of a thousand trees of the 

 forest is embraced in one acorn. That well illustrates the possibilities 

 of an idea. Ideas are the things that make change, and cause progress 

 and development. One day I observed a man on the other side of the 

 car reading a book on aviation. I asked him if he manufactured flying 

 machines. He said, "No, I just like to read this." We fell to discussing 

 things in general, about the war, and so on, and he told me an interesting 

 incident that had come under his observation. A young man in his twen- 

 ties, a young man who had been unsuccessful as a lumberman, had con- 

 ceived the idea whereby he could transport to Europe the very finest 

 grades of lumber in the midst of the war, when they were manufacturing 

 airships over there and were requiring the best of lumber obtainable. He 

 conceived the idea of transporting that lumber from America to Europe 

 without one penny as cost of transportation; when other people couldn't 

 even get ships to haul their stuff across; he got the ships, and got them 

 to ship it for nothing. Now, can anybody suggest how he did it? 



In shipping machinery, guns, etc., they have to have what they call 

 dunnage; they have to have lumber to keep the crates and boxes from 

 rolling and working out of place under the influence of the sea. In years 

 past the steamship companies have been using the cheapest lumber ob- 

 tainable and then throwing it away on the other side. But the thought 

 came to him to furnish the finest kind of lumber for this purpose, know- 

 ing that while they might spoil some of it, it wouldn't all be harmed. 

 With that proposition in mind he went to the steamship companies and 

 offered to furnish them dunnage free of charge provided they gave him 

 the salvage on the other side of the ocean. They agreed to it. He went 

 the rounds and got them to sign contracts to this effect. Most of the 

 principal steamship companies and most of the government transports 

 that shipped materials across the ocean made this contract with him. 

 After awhile it became evident that he had to have expert assistance, 

 so he employed an expert lumberman to do the work for him at each 

 port on a commission basis; and the gentleman to whom I was talking 

 was the representative of this young man in Baltimore. Eventually some 

 of the companies with whom he had contracts got tired of his making so 

 much money out of his idea and canceled the contract, and he renewed 

 it again on this basis — whenever they didn't have sufficient dunnage he 

 would furnish it on the terms of the original contract. The British gov- 

 ernment relied on its own employes to get the dunnage for it, and fell 

 down, and this gentleman had already sent out three shiploads from 

 Baltimore alone, where the British government had failed to get the dun- 

 nage. This young man, still in his twenties, cleaned up over a million 

 dollars profit in two years of the war, as the result of an idea. 



One of the most interesting men with whom I have come in contact 

 during the past few years, while I have been rambling about, was a Ger- 



