TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 571 



my fascination for the business, so I am still on the job and will probably 

 be wading thru snowdrifts with the balance of you all winter. (Laughter). 

 Now, gentlemen, the matter of co-operation, in some respects, it seems 

 to me we are overworking that term, we are applying it to many things 

 that in a measure are not applicable, but if there ever was a condition, 

 if there ever was an industrial proposition, that the spirit and theory and 

 the practical side of co-operation is applicable to, it is to this very prop- 

 osition that you gentlemen have before you, and that is in the matter of 

 marketing your produce from the farm, and especially live stock. I don't 

 know — of course I have never studied this until today, I have never read 

 it — but if we opine to even gain a living by virtue of our occupation, we 

 have got to organize, and when you organize it means that you must do 

 teamwork and you must co-operate, and when you cooperate you have 

 got to make up your mind that you are going to sacrifice some of your 

 personal independence, you have got to sacrifice in a measure some of 

 the ideas that you know better how to attend to your business than any- 

 body else, and that you aren't going to give it to any committee or council 

 or board of directors. If you have got that idea in mind, and you intend 

 to maintain that, you might just as well quit talking about co-operation. 

 That's my notion about it. But if you are willing to go into this thing, 

 sink, survive or perish, and cast your lot in the pot with everybody else, 

 and use the very best methods you have in your organization or any 

 other organization, you will succeed. You may not succeed in the mea- 

 sure that you think you ought to, but the greatest things that the world 

 has ever accomplished have been things that have been brought to light 

 and into existence under primary conditions like you gentlemen here try- 

 ing to find out some way to light you thru the dark caverns and the dark 

 conditions of today. 



So I say, if you are going to try to put this proposition in operation, 

 if you men in Iowa, with your members and your v/ealth to back it, and 

 with your experience, can not make a success of it here, there's no use 

 of our trying it in Missouri, or going to Kansas, or anywhere else. 



Now, I don't mean that in the application of the theory of co-operation 

 any man or anybody ought to lay down on the job— I don't believe that 

 is the God-given privilege of a farmer. I believe that God Almighty made 

 the farmer to work. (Laughter). He wouldn't have made your muscles so 

 strong, your flesh so hard, if He hadn't intended you to work; conse- 

 quently. He has put the biggest burden on your shoulders of any class of 

 people in the world. He has absolutely got you on the job to work. 

 Today, one-third of the population of this great commonwealth is feeding 

 the other two-thirds, providing everything for their necessity, their luxury 

 and their comfort, and you are working sixteen hours a day to do that, 

 while the other fellows are working six or eight, and loafing part of 

 that time. 



Now, I say you have got about the biggest job of any class of people 

 in the world, and certainly you realize that if you have been very studious 

 and very attentive to your business that God Almighty didn't intend for 

 you to lay down on the job, because if you had you would not have 

 gotten very far. 



