TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 405 



things over and we would now be groaning under the burden of 

 that extra tax had it not been for the influence and the power of 

 the Farm Bureau Federation and the state federations scattered 

 around over the United States. 



I haven't time to dwell on all of these things. You know that 

 when the railroads were granted the privilege of earning 5^ per 

 cent or 6 per cent, that they immediately began to struggle for 

 a valuation for their holdings. Nobody seems to know how- 

 much the railroads in the United States are worth. I think per- 

 haps the valuation, if we could get at it properly, would be 

 around 15-billions of dollars. It might be more — I am only 

 guessing at it, but the railroads, of course, conclude that their 

 holdings ought to be figured at 20-billions of dollars. Clifford 

 Thorne succeeded in cutting that down to about 17-billion dol- 

 lars, I believe — 16-billion 900-million, something like that, so that 

 in that w^ay something like 100-million dollars was saved to the 

 people who are paying the freight in the United States. Not only 

 that, but he shifted some of the responsibility onto the passenger 

 traffic. It was thru his efforts that that was done, and that ac- 

 counted for another 3(X)-million dollars that will not have to be 

 paid by the freight shippers of the United States, or it has 

 got to be paid by the passenger traffic, but some of that at least 

 until a short time ago, or quite a portion of it, fell upon these 

 men that are called ''drummers" that travel around over the 

 state of Iowa. In the end, however, I don't know that we gained 

 so much at that, because the man that buys a suit of clothes or a 

 pair of pants or socks or something to eat, pays that extra pas- 

 senger fair that is handed on down. You know, the farmer has 

 been the goat for so long paying all these extra expenses that 

 he had almost gotten used to it, and might not have gotten out 

 of the notion if he hadn't run out of money. So there are a lot 

 of things that w^e can do in the line of legislation to help the 

 farmers of Iowa. 



We are having those things in mind ; we are studying them as 

 a result; w^e hope that w^e are going to be fair w^ith the other 

 interests, but, on the other hand, we want the other interests to 

 be fair with us, and in that way we want to get passed sane, pro- 

 gressive legislation that will give the farmer his fair share. I 

 don't know how much you people know, or how much you 

 realize w^hat a hold we have on the legislators ; I mean how 

 anxious the legislators are to accommodate the Farm Bureau, but 

 they are running their legs off to get to us to find out what we 



