402 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



went farther and said that the farmers didn't know enough to 

 market their products ; that all they knew was to produce. Well, 

 maybe he \vas half right under past conditions, but the farmers 

 have got brains and they are going to learn how to market their 

 products. (Applause). 



The Committee of Seventeen, as you all know, has been spend- 

 ing sleepless nights over this question of marketing the surplus 

 grain in the United States. Reports from that committee indi- 

 cate that they are very soon going to have a plan to present to 

 the farmers of Iowa and the other states a plan that we can start 

 working on, to market our surplus grain. 



We have been told not very long since that we had an over- 

 production of food products in the United States, and that was 

 the reason why the price of corn slumped down from $1.75 and 

 $1.80 to 60c and 65c, at the most 70c, on the Chicago market. I 

 want to deny this statement that there is an overproduction of 

 food in the world today. (Applause). People in Europe, people 

 who love life just as much as we do, industrious, intelligent peo- 

 ple, are starving today for the want of food. It is a condition that 

 we are up against, and I am not going to admit that it is a condi- 

 tion that we might not have helped if we had done the things 

 that have been pointed out that could have been done — that have 

 been pointed out by the Federation that might have been done 

 to alleviate those conditions. There is not a world-shortage of 

 food. There is no reason, outside of the speculative mania of 

 some dealers in the United States, why this corn should be at the 

 price it is today. The trouble with us is that we have gone on 

 producing all these years ; have taken it for granted that we 

 could not set the price on our products, and we have allowed 

 some — well, I don't like to describe — I described him down at 

 my home county a day or two ago, that tickled those fellows, but 

 I guess I hadn't better put it that hard now ; but the price of 

 bread products is made by the speculative dealers on the board 

 of trade rather than by the farmers who produce that stuff. I 

 want to say to you people that no class and no interest can pros- 

 per properly, or efficiently, or as well as they should prosper, 

 when the price of their products, when the wealth that they 

 produce, when the price of that wealth is fixed by some agency 

 without. At the same time, the price of the products of the other 

 agencies in the United States, the price of the products that the 

 manufacturer produces, and other interests produce, is not fixed 

 from without, but is fixed from within. The day is going to 



