662 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



protect his interest. I know of no interest today, gentlemen, so important 

 as the live stock interest. It is largely your bread and butter; I don't 

 know what Iowa would do if she didn't raise live stock. 



I want to say a word about markets as I see the condition. It has oc- 

 curred to me, from what I have heard said by Mr. Thorne and other 

 speakers, and from what I know through bankers and various other 

 sources, that we may look well into the future with a view of lower 

 prices for live stock. That isn't encouraging, gentlemen, but the European 

 market isn't healthy, and I need not dwell on that subject, but we are pro- 

 ducing more meat in this country than it can of itself consume. The 

 packers have, to my mind, many storehouses and warehouses full of meat 

 laid in at a price with which you are all familiar. If the market should 

 drop they have to take their loss just the same as you had. Therefore I 

 say co-operation between these great interests, where you may know the 

 facts, might be helpful. 



There is one more thing that I want to mention, and that is capital 

 and labor. We are all to some extent familiar with the strife. We take 

 up the paper this morning and in large headlines we read what labor is 

 doing in Washington — and they are doing it every day. Labor has its 

 right and its value and should be protected — so should capital. There 

 should be co-operation! I have always been greatly in favor of a co-op- 

 erative board composed— or commissioned, if you please — composed of the 

 men engaged in the line of work that they are representing. Most of 

 us have been in the habit of working ten or eleven or twelve hours per 

 day and putting in good long hours at that, getting up early and going to 

 bed late, and taking a very short time for lunch. That's the life and his- 

 tory of a farmer and a feeder. Organized labor comes along and says, 

 "Eight hours a day is as much as we think we should work," and he is 

 late getting to his day's work, he is early getting off for lunch, he is late 

 coming back after lunch and early quitting in the evening. In fact, 

 he doesn't give you more than seven straight hours of work. In order 

 to produce as much as this country can produce of labor and other com- 

 modities, I am inclined to think that the day is not far ahead of us 

 when we will have to get back to a full day's work. (Prolonged applause.) 

 The railroad administration is paying most of their employes who are 

 members of organized labor from 50 to 100 per cent more than formerly. 

 In other words, we are paying them about twice as much as we used to 

 and getting safely one-third less work. You can think of that and see a 

 great lesson right in there. 



Now, we will go back again to the railroads. The railroads of the 

 United States have, or did have in 1918, 90,000 stock cars, and less than 

 10,000 of them were double decks. You can figure bad orders and depre- 

 ciation will run that down today to where 80,000 cars is as many as 

 we can expect to find serviceable. The United States needs 120,000 stock 

 cars to intelligently handle its live stock, and they need in addition to 

 that about 700,000 other cars. We need from 10,000 to 20,000 miles 

 more of double track, and I am going to tell you why. 



The Secretary: You mean we need 700,000 cars additional to what 

 we now have? 



