PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 533 



lights in the home. But if that boy is made out of the right kind of 

 stuff, and the stuff that we hate to see leave the farm, he will leave 

 because of this — there is no opportunity for him to accumulate and ex- 

 pand and develop all his powers so much as there is in the city. And 

 the thing that I am alarmed about, and the thing that I am anxious about, 

 is that the conditions on the farms of the middle-west shall be such, 

 whether it is done by live stock feeding or what it is, that the soil will 

 be maintained so fertile and conditions will be so prosperous that the 

 young man sees that there is opportunity to spend a life and to accom- 

 plish the things that he is ambitious to accomplish there on the farm, the 

 same, or equal, or better than it is in the city. A boy with as much of 

 the ambition tied up in him that the American boy of this type has is 

 looking for a place to spend that life where he can get somewhere and 

 do something. He is not looking for theaters to go to, or modern con- 

 veniences, as good as they may be. He is not looking for the social life 

 of the city. That fellow is looking for a place to do something and to be 

 something; and if we settle down and back and back until the rural life 

 is a peasant life, as it is in Europe, what is that fellow going to do? 

 There is no opportunity for him there, and that is the thing that concerns 

 me when I get to thinking back about the basis and the foundation of this 

 condition here in the middle-west. That is the thing that stirs my blood. 



Let us organize. Let us have our Meat Producers' organization and 

 our Farm Bureaus, and men skilled in holding the reins of government 

 and the reins of economics sp that we will get fair play and a fair show, 

 where the best men and the biggest men can afford to spend their lives 

 on the farm. (Applause.) I am not pleading for a prosperous and a per- 

 manent agriculture and a rural citizenship in order that our agricul- 

 tural communities alone may be better and more worth living in, but 

 I am pleading for it for the good of the nation. 



I am one who lives in Iowa because I love Iowa. I suppose that 

 I live in Iowa because I was born here, and naturally was raised to think 

 it was a good place. But it goes a little further than that with me. I 

 have got a lot of sympathy and a lot of attachment for Iowa and for Har- 

 din county, my own county. I believe Iowa is the best state in the nation. 

 I could run on here and tell you about the fact that the cows alone of 

 Iowa bring more money into the state every year than every bit of citrus 

 fruit that is sold in the United States. I could run on with a whole 

 string of stuff like that. We haven't half advertised Iowa. Stanislaus 

 county, California — I have got a lot of sympathy for California — my 

 mother-in-law lives there — alone spends $100,000 a year just sending out 

 advertising about the good things of their county. How would the 

 farmers stand for a $100,000 levy in one of our taxes to advertise what 

 we have, let alone building good roads? 



I may be guilty of repetition somewhat, but I want to say again that 

 the plea for rural conditions and the maintenance of rural citizenship is 

 not a matter so much of concern or betterment for the sake of rural con- 

 ditions, but it is for the sake of this whole state and the whole country. 

 The basis of everything that is good or prosperous, in the middle-west 

 particularly and in this nation as a whole, the final basis, is the fertility 

 of the soil. 



