434 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



pictures on the wall, music-box in the house, better education for his 

 children, better churches, better schools, better roads, better rural sur- 

 roundings; or he will become a retired farmer. Isn't that right, sir? 



Whenever we make farming a business, as is manufacturing a business, 

 or as is banking a business, or as is merchandising a business; whenever 

 we look upon our investment in our farm and our investment in labor, 

 and our investment in brain in our farm operations, as a capital invest- 

 ment, as the banker would look upon it, or the merchant or the manufac- 

 turer, then we shall begin to figure what is the return upon our capital 

 investment, and if the return is a reasonable rate of return upon the in- 

 vestment, we are going to be contented and prosperous. If it is not, then 

 this tendency of the young country woman and the young man to turn 

 their backs upon the tender scenes of their childhood, to go into the 

 cities and towns with high hopes in their hearts, which are too often 

 turned to ashes on their lips, will continue. 



Well, what are we going to do about it? What is the remedy? No use 

 to put up a straw man and just throw rocks at him. You cannot hit him 

 in the solar plexus and knock him out, there is no use to put him up, is 

 there? First let us eliminate all of the unnecessary factors in our pro- 

 cesses of distribution. Listen, my friends! From the time a seed of 

 cotton is planted — and you know more about wheat than I do and you 

 can figure it out yourself — and it comes back to me in the form of this 

 cotton sheet, fourteen different people have had their hands in the pie. 

 That is the truth! I challenge anybody to challenge my statement of facts. 

 I am great on telling the truth if it doesn't hurt me. (Laughter). You know 

 I can afford to tell it, because I am not running for anything. (Laughter) 



Second: Standardization, — That is a big word very much over-used, — 

 of all agricultural products into grades and classes, that the original 

 producer, the farmer, may know accurately what he has to sell. 



Third: The warehousing in elevators or warehouses of all warehouse- 

 able agricultural products in such quantities as are necessary to bring 

 about the most orderly distribution of farm products, — which means, that, 

 after all, the vital thing lacking to make agriculture as prosperous as it 

 deserves to be, is a system for the orderly marketing of farm products. 

 Mr. Simpson, you haven't got any such system now; there isn't any 

 system of marketing of farm products, it is a hodgepodge affair. Throw 

 it overboard! Get to it first, the devil take the hinder-most. That is the 

 way it is in cotton, and I know it is the same way in wheat and corn. 



What is the result of this system? Rather the lack of system of 

 marketing farm products? First, you place a tremendous strain upon your 

 transportation facilities and compel the railroads — Listen! — and compel 

 the railroads to keep up an organization for twelve months in order that 

 it may be prepared to take care of the moving of your crops in a period 

 of four months. Isn't that right? You cannot build up an organization 

 for a period of four or five months' service, and then discharge it, and 

 then hire it again. If you are going to have an efficient organization, 

 you have to have one which insures to its employees steady and re- 

 numerative wages, haven't you? What does that mean? That means 



