REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 381 



yond a reasonable doubt that the interests of the farmer and the labor- 

 ing man are antagonistic and they ought to fight. Just wait until we 

 find out fully and get fully organized so we will know whose interests 

 are at stake, and we will show these fellows where to head in. 



There is probably only one way to get these chaps now, and that is by 

 taxing back into the treasury of the United States these sums which 

 they have taken from you by economic power. I am in favor of trying to 

 do that. We will do it by statute, if we can, and then if the court holds 

 the statute unconstitutional, as a lot of these courts do, we will amend 

 the constitution — do you see? The best provision in the constitution 

 of the United States, the best provision in any constitution, is the one 

 that provides for its amendment. Remember that. Why, the fathers 

 amended our constitution ten times themselves in the first Congress after 

 its adoption, and those are the amendments that really give us the bill 

 of rights under the constitution. 



It is time for us to look these matters up a little. It is time for us to 

 figure out our own proposition a little. As I told you, we have just been 

 investigating some of these big companies in the oil business. I remem- 

 ber a good many years ago I helped to stir up a little lawsuit on the 

 question of rates down at Kansas City. We held the first hearing there 

 on the discrimination of the Standard Oil Company against the inde- 

 pendents, and it stirred up a great breeze, and the investigations then 

 went all over the United States and they finally resulted in the Attorney 

 General bringing an action and the court dissolving the Standard Oil 

 Company into its component parts. 



Well, I had three of those companies in before the manufacturers' com- 

 mittee since I have been down there to find out what the effect of my 

 good work had been, and, do you know, the Standard Oil Company of 

 New Jersey with its $125,000 a year president — a man who could be 

 duplicated many times right here in this crowd, able but not more able 

 than hundreds of others everywhere — ever since we succeeded in dis- 

 solving that outfit and stopping that monopoly, has earned more than 

 56 per cent a year on their whole tremendous capitalization. I don't 

 know whether I did any good or not, in dissolving that outfit. 



Would Turn the Rascals Out ^ 



We are not going to do any good as long as the Congress of the United 

 States is influenced so much by those big interests. We are not going 

 to do any good until we get a majority of fellows in both houses of Con- 

 gress who are willing to look at this from the standpoint of the common 

 man and to provide the legal methods that will stop this taxation without 

 representation. 



I am going over to New York in a few days to talk to that crowd over 

 there. I don't know whether I will get out alive or not. I will tackle it 

 once, anyhow. And then after it is over I am going back again, and the 

 next time I go back I am going to see the farmers and the laboring peo- 

 ple. I want to see your Farm Bureau and your Grange, Mr. Bradfute, 

 and I want to see the State Federation of Labor, and I want to see the 

 American Legion and the Spanish War Veterans, and I want to see all 

 of those crowds. There is enough in common in all those organizations 



