426 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



that it has fallen way short of its definition — Sam said there is just the 

 "tics" left. I believe that the women can find a large place for their in- 

 fiuence and their energy and their resources and their strength. 



Now, I am not denying to the gentlemen that we make mistakes. 

 Women will perhaps continue to make mistakes, because we are like the 

 colored brethren, we have been enfranchised for only a short time. 

 (Laughter). George Elliott said "Women are foolish, I am not denying 

 that; but God Almighty made them that way to match up with the men." 

 (Laughter). 



Now, community housekeeping, and that is what this bigger work 

 leally is, is such that it will take the women to help out in the house- 

 cleaning. When a man cleans house or sweeps the floor, he just sweeps 

 up in the middle of the floor, and we have to have the w^omen coming up" 

 behind and cleaning the dirt out of the corners. And we believe that is 

 the way it is going to be in what we call community housekeeping. 

 (Applause). 



I am sure that another place that mother and the girls will want to 

 keep up with father and the boys is in this wonderfully flne, new, great- 

 big movement called the Farm Bureau organization. I have watched for 

 the past few days great big loads of corn going down the road past my 

 home to market, and I have known that the price of that product was not 

 commensurate with the cost of production, and I also knew tliat a great 

 many of those teams were the teams of tenant farmers who had to raise 

 their rent by a certain time or would have to move, and if he moves, 

 there is a provision in his lease that he must deliver the corn before he 

 leaves the neighborhood. 



We have many real and fancied ills. Sometimes we feel, when we have 

 done all the work and have gotten very little of the pay, that we agree 

 with the poet who sang: 



"Truth forever on the scaffold. 



Wrong forever on the throne; 

 Yet that scaffold sways the future, 



And, behind it in the dim unknown, 

 Standeth God among the shadows, 



Keeping watch above His own." 



And I am sure that the women of the country are going to help every- 

 where in Federation work in a womanly, modest, becoming way, coming 

 into your sessions when you have invited them, and helping you with 

 anything that they can do. And, if it is possible for us to do it, perhaps 

 with our woman's wit and keen insight, sometimes being able to help out 

 a great deal. 



It has been incredible, the growth of the Farm Bureau movement, be- 

 ginning uncertainly, with no precedent to follow. You have grown from 

 that handful of men who felt that you had a cause that needed to be 

 righted, into this great army of men and women of today. If you were to 

 pass in review before a given place at the rate of 5,000 every day, it would 

 take you ten months to go past the reviewing stand. That is a fine show- 



