432 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



ve're going to the mountains." And we went to the mountains, way up 

 in the Blue Ridge mountains in South Carolina, three thousand feet above 

 sea-level — wonderful country — it is the only country I have ever been in 

 that I didn't see a Ford automobile. (Laughter). And we hadn't been there 

 more than a week, when one afternoon as the sun was sinking over the 

 western hills I heard a cherry voice calling me from around the corner 

 of the hotel, and she said to me "I want you to view the wonderful sunset." 

 And it occurred to me that that sun had been setting back of our house 

 for ten thousand years, and she had never seen it before. And the next 

 afternoon she called me again for something or other, and as I came into 

 view I saw her with her arms around the neck of the mangiest houn' dog 

 in all the mountains — petting it; and then I said to myself "Surely, this 

 change of scenery works a wonderful transformation in a human being." 



And when I say that Henry Ford is a great benefactor, I mean to say 

 this, that he made it possible for the farmer's wife and the farmer's 

 daughter to break the monotony of their surroundings and to see a little 

 something of the world. I asked an audience in South Carolina, in my 

 own county, twelve miles from the capitol of the state, just as a matter 

 of curiosity and for information, this question: "I have often heard the 

 assertion that there are farm women within twelve miles of the capitol 

 of your state, sixty years of age, who have never had the proud privilege 

 of standing within its shadows and saying to herself 'Here is concentrated 

 the power of the people of South Carolina, and in these bricks and in this 

 granite is reflected a part of my own power.' " I said "if there are any 

 such, will you hold up your hands?" And a dozen hands shot up to verify 

 that statement. Think of it! And then tell me that Henry Ford isn't a 

 benefactor. 



That comes of the old order of things. Not over 20 per cent of the 

 farm homes in the United States have in them either artificial lights or 

 running water, — the burden-lifter of the American farm wife. 



The farmer is the only individual in the world that I know of who has a 

 product to sell that has no voice in saying how much he will sell it for. 

 If you take a bushel of wheat and bring it into this market, you will take 

 what the fellow offers you for it or take it back home, and you will usually 

 take what he offers you for it. Yet, when you go right around the comer 

 to buy a loaf of bread, you will take the loaf of bread at the price that the 

 ether fellow names to you, don't you? That is true. That is of the old 

 order of things. 



There is no class of men in America who give more hours to a day's 

 labor than the farmer, and yet, gentlemen, I am going to venture an asser- 

 tion here, and it is that the average farmer in the greatest agricultural 

 state in the United States, in the greatest agricultural area of the same 

 size in the world, the state of Iowa, that the average farmer out of his 

 crop for 1920 has not realized a profit more than sufficient to pay his 

 taxes and meet the interest on his capital invested. Is that true, or not? 



Hold up your hands who think that is true, Oh, darn it, this looks like 



a republican gathering. (Laughter and applause). What has all this re- 

 sulted in, my friends? I am not painting these pictures to be funny. I say 



