REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 379 



oppose an endorsement of the railroad law. It wasn't long after that 

 meeting until those who were interested in the subject began urging me 

 to become a candidate for the United States Senate. I never up to that 

 time had met a labor leader, except one, one from my home town, War- 

 ren S. Stone, the grand chief of the engineers. But I defended labor 

 against the attempt, as it seemed to me, to drive them toward involun- 

 tary servitude in making their right to strike a criminal offense. After 

 that meeting I found that I had made friends of labor everywhere. 



I still think, my friends, that the greatest question of this generation 

 involves the common people — those who produce by the work of their 

 hands as well as their brain, upon the farm and in the factory, and that 

 the great question is that they should unite in economic and political 

 co-operation. 



Why a Farmer-Labor Combination 



I went down to Washington City a year ago in July as a special rep- 

 resentative of the Farmers' Union. I went for the purpose of making 

 the opening statement to the joint committee of Congress that was in- 

 vestigating agriculture for the farmers of the United States. In that 

 statement I said to the committee that I believed producing labor on the 

 farm and in the factory and everywhere should co-operate together for 

 their economic and political rights. I said that labor was the principal 

 customer of the products of the farm, and I said that the farmer was 

 the biggest customer of the products of labor. Then I set out that of 

 the dollar which the laboring man paid for the products of the farm, 

 the farmer gets 38 cents. 



It was challenged. A New York millionaire on that committee thought 

 that kind of talk was worse than bolshevism. I said it was the best 

 estimate that I could get, and I said it was the duty of the committee to 

 investigate an important fact like that and give us something authorita- 

 tive, something that can be quoted and used with confidence. They 

 spent five or six months investigating that and other questions. At the 

 end of the investigation the committee reported that I was wrong. Yes, 

 that joint committee of Congress reported that out of the dollar which 

 the laboring man pays for products of the farm the farmer gets 37 cents. 



Cost of Distribution Is Excessive 



When you turn that proposition around, and the farmer becomes the 

 customer of labor, buying in the United States more than 50 per cent 

 of the industrial products, you will find the same result. The farmer 

 must have equipment for his farm, and in addition must have equipment 

 for his personal use, his home and his family, and that makes him a 

 large buyer of all of it, and out of the dollar which the farmer pays for the 

 products of labor the laboring man gets a little less than 35 cents. 



There are some other governments in the world that have figured out 

 this question. There isn't any doubt that this cost of distribution is 

 excessive in the United States. Every farmer knows it. Every laboring 

 man knows it. They have not stopped with finding just the facts. They 

 have gone ahead with the remedy, and what is the remedy? It is 

 economic co-operation, the producers and the consumers co-operating on 

 the Rochdale plan. 



