534 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



You can talk about the prosperity of the city of Des Moines and the 

 bank deposits of Iowa, about our good schools and our good colleges, and 

 I pride in these as much as any of you dare to, and yet the basis is the 

 soil fertility. If we did not have rich soil in Iowa what would we have 

 here? Then why do we treat the fertility of our soil so lightly? Why 

 do we take it as a matter of course and mine it rather than farm it? 

 There is a close relationship between good soil and good citizens. I have 

 always felt that an intelligent live stock farming program is on a little 

 higher plane, when I think of these by-products of cattle feeding or live 

 stock farming. 



We are a group here met primarily to consider the business of feed- 

 ing and marketing of live stock, so that we may be more prosperous, so 

 that our business may be more profitable, and it is well worth our while 

 that we should so be. But there are by-products remote in national pros- 

 perity and in national citizenship that are far beyond the feed lot, and 

 my plea is for a continuation of a permanent, substantial rural citizen- 

 ship, and again I wish to repeat that I believe there is a real, vital re- 

 lationship between good live stock farming that maintains the soil that 

 got created in the Mississippi valley and the development of a rural and 

 national citizenship of which we have so many years been proud and of 

 which we always will be proud. (Applause.) 



The President: If there are any questions that any of you 

 men wish to ask Mr. Carter we will give opportunity for a few 

 minutes' discussion. We are not so rushed for time as we were 

 yesterday. 



I would just like to emphasize and endorse what Mr. Carter 

 has said to you concerning the conservation of the soil through the 

 process of live stock farming. I am a little like Mr. Carter, I 

 guess, along those lines. My environment has been such, I guess 

 — I am sorry to say I did not inherit it because my father didn't 

 seem to ever have any love for live stock, so I certainly did not 

 inherit it. But I remember as a boy, how they always appealed to 

 me, and I always felt at home in the feed lot and looked forward to 

 the time when I could do business myself in that way and have 

 something of my own. Somehow, when the feed lots are empty and 

 I go out to the farm I do not feel at home. It seems as though 

 there is something lacking there. There is something that is not 

 there that ought to be there; and the facts are that our feed lots 

 are hardly ever empty. They never are empty of both hogs and 

 cattle, but there are times that we have no cattle on feed. 



We are not big feeders, either, but we manage to have some 

 cattle on feed almost constantly the year around, not because we 

 are getting rich out of it, as Mr. Carter has said to you — not by 

 any means, but because our farm is improving in fertility. We 

 are raising by far larger crops on that old farm than we did thirty 



