TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 569 



ADDRESS BY S. P. HOUSTON. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Asso- 

 ciation: Now, what your chairman said in his introductory remarks was 

 all right, but that doesn't mean much in my judgment nowadays. 



Gentlemen, I am very happy to he with you; I have been your neigh- 

 ber for a long while, and we have all been working at the same problems, 

 and our interests and ambitions are common, and whatever success you 

 people make toward solving the complicating problems that concern the 

 industry today is going to help us, and whatever progress we make will 

 help you. 



We came up here not to be seen, but to see, as your chairman has 

 already told you. We came up here at the invitation of Mr. Sykes and 

 Mr. Wallace, to see what progressive plans you gentlemen had with re- 

 spect to the all-important question of marketing the products of your 

 farms. Now, as I said before, I didn't come to make any remarks, but it 

 seems to me that you have tackled about the biggest job you ever had. 

 If you get away with this, I don't believe there is anything in the years 

 to come that the brains and energy and ability of the Iowa feeders can 

 not accomplish, and I have faith that you will get results. I don't know 

 what measure of results you will get, but it seems to me that you are 

 breaking new ground and carrying on the right track towards a solution 

 of some of our direful and distressful troubles of the present day. 



It might be illuminating at this time to say that the agricultural 

 people of this country, as you know, in the past ninety days, have lost in 

 the depreciation of the values of farm products and live stock half enough 

 to pay the war debt — five billion dollars in your corn, wheat, oats, barley 

 and hay, and hogs, cattle, sheep, horses and mules — all products that 

 pertain to farm activities. Now, if that is the case, it looks to me like 

 in the future reorganization of the taxation problem that inasmuch as we 

 have given about half of our worldly goods this year, we shouldn't be 

 compelled to pay very much income tax next year. (Laughter). A good 

 friend of mine down in Missouri, who operates on a good, big scale, said 

 to me the other day, in passing up his profits and losses: "If I could have 

 done something to have broken into the penitentiary a year ago, I would 

 be about $50,000 better off today, and I wouldn't be very much more dis- 

 credited at home or abroad, either." (Laughter). So that is the feeling 

 we have down in Missouri. 



We have the most propitious condition we have had in years; we 

 have the long grass, all sort of corn, and we have everything else except 

 money to buy cattle and the ability to figure out a profit on our year's 

 business this year. It has been one of the most direful years we have 

 ever experienced, and the fact of the business is that a good many of 

 our men are going out of business, because it has been so unprofitable 

 that there is no encouragement for a man to stay with the game any 

 longer. 



Now, I don't know that I could say anything further with reference 

 to your proposed plan here of marketing. I have been very much inter- 

 ested in Mr. Harlan's discussion of the mass of information that he gained 

 of the marketing proposition, and I think that the figures that he has 

 presented here would probably, with an extension of that line of research 



