REPORT OF IOWA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 399 



the board of trade and then violate the rules. We made a straight-out 

 application. That application was approved by the president of the 

 board — and it was endorsed by vice president of the First National Bank 

 of Chicago. We had some standing with those gentlemen who sponsored 

 this application for a seat on the exchange. I didn't try to get a seat 

 myself personally. I told the committee when they advised me to drop 

 the application, or to withdraw it and put in a personal application and 

 they would suspend the rules and get me a seat on the exchange, that 

 I was acting for the farmers' organization and I expected to make good. 



Policy Not One of Destruction } 



So, they turned us down. The status is fixed. That was the real ob- 

 ject in making them pass on it — to fix the status, to find out if they ever 

 seriously contemplated letting us in there. Now the status is fixed and 

 they say we cannot come in. I have accepted the challenge to fight it 

 out on behalf of the farmers of this country. You stand behind this 

 proposition and we will win. And we will win without destroying any- 

 thing. We will not destroy the board of trade, we will not destroy a 

 thing that is of any advantage in the marketing of grain. 



Confidence in the proposition has been shaken. There were two fac- 

 tions on the board, and it became a question who would control the U. 

 S. Grain Growers. They went out to the farmers for votes without regard 

 to what happened. And it has all come about because we had an un- 

 sound policy of proceeding in the Farm Bureau Federation. We encour- 

 aged the Committee of. Seventeen and it worked out the plan. We car- 

 ried them along with all the expense money they needed, and allowed 

 them to function 100 per cent. They had the services of the best lawyers 

 in the country, but when that child was born we left it to the tender 

 mercies of anybody that wanted to jump on it. It also fell victim of the 

 personal ambitions of several men on the board, and with all these diffi- 

 culties the child couldn't live. 



To have permitted that policy to be followed was wrong for the Amer- 

 ican Farm Bureau Federation. If we are going to encourage these 

 organizations in the marketing of our products we have got to stand 

 behind them and see that they function efficiently, so that nobody can 

 disturb them. We have done it in the live stock business against the 

 advice and prejudice of almost every shipper in the country, and we 

 made it go because we drove it along roughshod over every obstacle that 

 was put in its way. We believed it to be businesslike and sound, and 

 we stayed by it, and gentlemen, it has won. 



The board of supervisors of the board of trade will not let you func- 

 tion down there. They are fighting for their lives. How soon you can 

 get a decision from the supreme court I do not know. We are going to 

 attempt to build a sales agency, and we are going to have some more 

 activity next week if we have your approval. 



RESOLUTIONS 



We, the members of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, in convention 

 assembled at Des Moines, Iowa, January 12th, 1923, pledge our support 

 to the principle of co-operation and to improve in every way possible the 



