PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 503 



As we got just opposite those dairy cows the chauffeur stopped 

 the automobile and said, "Now, heah, gentlemen, heah is the 

 finest herd of Jersey cows in the United States." Well, the 

 fact was every one of those Jersey cows was just as spotted as 

 it could be. 



Well, it was pretty difficult for Mr. Cunningham and me to 

 keep straight faces under those conditions, but we did manage to. 

 Well, I think the Secretary will have to post his chauffeur when 

 he goes out to show these Iowa farmers Jersey cows after this. 

 You cannot fool them that way. You cannot fool Iowa farmers 

 on a Jersey cow, if she is spotted. 



Without taking more of your time I am going to introduce to 

 you our old secretary, Hon. H. C. Wallace, now Secretary of Agri- 

 culture. 



ADDRESS OF HON. HENRY C. WALLACE 

 (SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE) 



Ladies and Gentlemen, and Fellow Members of the Corn Belt Meat 

 Producers' Association (I hope you have not discharged me from being 

 a member yet) : 



I haven't any special talk to make to you. I think I told you when I 

 was here last year that the very thought of trying to prepare an address 

 to the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association was repugnant to me. I 

 never did try to prepare an address, and it seems just like preparing an 

 address for your own family. I feel I am still one of the members of this 

 association. When I look about here tonight and see men scattered here 

 and there through the room who were in at the very first meetings and 

 who have attended almost every meeting since, it makes me feel just 

 like getting back among my own people again. I know this past year has 

 been a hard one for you. I suppose at times you and a great many other 

 farmers in the United States have felt that the folks down at Washington 

 had rather forgotten all about you. Well, we have not. 



I suppose I hear from more farmers than any other man in the United 

 States. From two thousand to as many as five thousand letters a day 

 come into that department. A great many of them are in the nature — 

 not a large percentage of that number, but quite a number of letters every 

 week are in the nature of personal letters that come to me from farmers 

 or from farmers' wives, farmers' daughters and farmers' sons, telling me 

 of their own peculiar troubles, personal troubles, and some of them are 

 heart breaking letters. 



I remember one, for example. We loaned some two million dollars 

 last year and a million and half this year to the farmers in the north- 

 west, in Montana and Dakota, mostly, and in a number of those other 

 states where they had had failures of the wheat crop. That is almost 

 a single crop country. We made loans each year to between 12,000 and 

 14,000 individual farmers for the purpose of buying seed, and then in the 



