150 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



is manager of the Agricultural Bureau of the Omaha Chamber of 

 Commerce, who will give us a short talk. Mr. Mcintosh. 



H. J. Mcintosh, Agriculture Bureau, Omaha Chamber of Commerce. 

 Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Fair Association: 



This bunch of cards I have here is nothing of importance. There is 

 nothing here bigger than a two-spot, so you need not think that I am 

 going to spring anything on you. 



I regard my being here as being something of, we will say, a piece of 

 humor, not because it is a joke on you, because I am not serious, and I 

 am sure it is not because you are uot serious in what you are doing; but 

 the world is so full of unusual things at the present time, and things 

 come around by a mere happenstance in so many cases, that we are not 

 always able to give a good reason for the faith that is in us. 



Now, my coming here is a mere happenstance, and it comes about in 

 this way. This past spring when I came into Omaha, or back to Omaha, 

 after sixteen years spent in farming and cattle feeding out in central 

 Nebraska, the people down there had become alive to the fact that agri- 

 culture is of primary importance in the world, and that no city, or no 

 community, could have permanent prosperity unless the agriculture 

 which produces the food for the people, and, up to this time, the labor 

 for the largest number of people engaged in any industry, is prosperous. 

 In Nebraska we have had a rather peculiar condition of things, dating 

 back for a number of years, quite different from what I noticed in Iowa, 

 for the reason that Iowa has never yielded readily — the farming popula- 

 tion of Iowa has never yielded readily to those isms and calls and agi- 

 tations that take root rather easily in less favored districts, and while I 

 need not apologize for Nebraska, — I didn't make it, — Nebraska is not 

 favored in its natural resources to compare with the country east of the 

 river of which Iowa is the garden spot. So back in the '90's when we 

 were all more or less in hard shape, there took root in the Nebraska 

 mind, the Nebraska farmer mind, considerable of belief that other men's 

 hands were against them, and that he was the under-dog in the fight, and 

 that he was abused more or less, and so we have the Farmers Alliance 

 movement there, and of which you know and which became dominant 

 in the state under the PopuLst party for a number of years. Now, that 

 was based largely on a belief that the farmer was not getting a fair 

 chance; and big business got to be a bug-bear, but a great deal of that 

 spirit has passed away, and a great many of our farmers are absolutely 

 fair to other interests, but there has been a feeling in Nebraska stronger 

 than most places that the city interest and the farming interest were not 

 co-ordinated and didn't run along the same lines, and so on. 



Now, when I came in, there was a movement under way to get a con- 

 necting link somewhere that would link up the notion that all business 

 interests are on the same basis, and that the farmers' interests and 

 the city's interests were co-ordinate and not opposite; and they 

 said to me, "If you will take charge of an agricultural bureau in the 

 Chamber of Commerce we will let you go ahead and see what you can do 

 with it," and I accepted with the theory that the work we should do 



