570 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



and information, be of untold benefit not only to you, but to every man 

 engaged in the business in the years to come. You are getting down to 

 basic principles, and getting down to basic facts that we all ought to know 

 and should have known years ago. 



We are just now, today, beginning to realize that we are compelled to 

 do the things that we probably are saying our more composed judgment 

 would have told us to do two years ago. The fact of the business is, I 

 have thought in my own mind that if the condition of the country after 

 the armistice, was seen today, if our industrial condition had gone to the 

 bottom then like we are today, had headed that way at that time', we 

 v/ould be on the upgrade and near the top of the hill. We have been 

 on a rising plane instead of a declining. I don't know where the bottom 

 is going to be, and no other man living knows. I suspicion in my own 

 mind that we are not near to the bottom of price conditions. It is a re- 

 grettable thing to say, it is a tragic thing, and yet every man's business 

 and every man's experience indicate that there is not a rift in the cloud 

 that would encourage a man to put into his business good, hard-earned 

 money that you reasonably know, if you follow it up without let or hin- 

 drance and without any improvement in the system of agriculture or mar- 

 keting, would eventually bring him to bankruptcy. That is not entirely 

 the fault of you gentlemen here. We have been busily engaged in the 

 very necessary and gainful occupation of producing the basic foodstuffs 

 that supply the wants of the world, and we haven't had the time, we 

 haven't had the facilities, we haven't had the co-operation of the neces- 

 sary agencies of the government, to do the things that we are compelled 

 to do to save ourselves from destruction. I realize this, that the last two 

 years, especially since the formation of the American Farm Bureau 

 Federation, we have gotten together and talked over our individual and 

 our collective problems more than we have ever in all the history of the 

 past. The idea of co-operation and collective bargaining, and all those 

 terms that are calculated to be developed into a new ideal of commercial- 

 ism in the years to come, must necessarily be of slow growth. It is a 

 matter of education to the common run of agricultural people. I am 

 not different from my own kind; I have not had the opportunity to study 

 those questions as I probably should have done, but it seems to me if 

 we are ever going to get anywhere, if we ever expect to be in a position 

 to claim our part of the increment of wealth that we produce, we have 

 got to get down and do some team-work, we have got to get together and 

 use the best judgment, the best energy, and the best brain-power that we 

 possess among the people that we represent. It is a strange thing in the 

 study of the human mind, whenever times are good we go sailing along, 

 drifting like the summer clouds, and we never think of the pitfalls and 

 the calamity that are awaiting us just down the lane a little bit around 

 the turn. If we could see those things, probably we would have shaped 

 our business differently. I know, I flattered myself that (if you will par- 

 don a little personal reference), I flattered myself that I was going to 

 quit the game, which I was absolutely afraid of risking any further — I felt 

 that there would surely be a day of reckoning, and I didn't want to be 

 under the foundation when the house fell, but I am just as deep in the 

 basement as any man here, (Laughter). My intuition didn't overcome 



