PART II 



Agricultural Rooms, State House 



WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1920. 



The president (Mr. C. E. Cameron) called the meeting to order 

 at 10 a. m. 



The vice president (Mr. J. P. Mullen), taking the chair, an- 

 nounced the next topic on the program would be the address of 

 the president, Mr. C. E. Cameron. 

 Gentlemen of the Convention: 



We are again assembled in annual convention under Section 1657-d. I 

 wish to briefly refer to some matters, directly or indirectly pertaining to 

 the welfare of the Society, trusting it may not be wholly devoid of in- 

 terest to you. 



Glancing backward over the lapse of time since our last annual meeting, 

 we cannot refrain from asserting our conviction that it has been a re- 

 markable year. A year ago everything looked bright for the future, and 

 the future was bright up to the time of harvesting one of the largest crops 

 Iowa has ever raised. All the fairs, not only Iowa but all the other states, 

 reported record-breaking attendance. But since the closing of the fair 

 season, and at the commencement of marketing our crops, prices for farm 

 products commenced to fall, and today farmers are not realizing, in some 

 cases, what rent they have to pay for the land. 



To my mind, conditions will have to change. Grain rents will have to 

 be substituted for cash rent, and the landlord will then share equally with 

 the tenant in the fat and lean years. I know of farms that are now rented 

 for from $15 to $20 per acre, and the crops will not pay the rent. If the 

 landlord should throw off $5 or $10 an acre this year, and next year the 

 tenant should have a good crop and prices would be higher, he would not 

 be willing to reimburse the landlord for what he did for him this year. And 

 that is the reason I think grain rental is the best, taken one year with 

 another, and the renter would not be forced to sell his crop to pay the 

 cash rent as a great many of them have to do. 



We all agree that we have been going a fast clip for the last two or 

 three years and that we did not realize conditions would change so sud- 

 denly. In fact, we all have more or less anticipated the receipts of our 

 promising crops of 1920, and did not expect them to go below the cost 

 of production. And that is what they have done. 



Speaking of the 1920 State Fair, while our attendance fell a little short 

 of the 1919 Fair, there were several reasons for that. During the first 

 three or four days of the Fair, while it did not rain here, it rained all 

 around Des Moines and prevented the people from coming in their autos. 

 The threatened strike of the city street car men, in my mind, kept a great 

 many people away, for they were afraid to come, even in their autos, for 

 fear of congestion of cars in and out of the grounds. 



