PROCEEDINGS CORN BELT MEAT PRODUCERS' ASSN. 535 



and thirty-five years ago, when it was practically virgin soil. Our 

 corn crops are away ahead of what they were then, and I attribute 

 it entirely to the fact that we have given our attention to live stock 

 farming, and I do not see how — sometimes it is a conundrum to me 

 to discover why men insist on grain farming, and continue it year 

 after year and year after year with these valuable Iowa farms, and 

 you will scarcely see any live stock on the farm at all. I can not 

 understand it. 



Of course, just how the younger generation is going to take to 

 live stock farming is quite a problem. I am not on the program 

 for this speech. I am filling in the place of another man that could 

 not come. Mr. Bane was on the program. You will pardon me 

 for not mentioning that fact. He was to talk to you on his expe- 

 rience in feeding bulls, but somehow Mr. Bane was unable to get 

 here, so that we are one number short on the program, and the 

 Committee on Resolutions is not ready to report yet. I don't 

 know whether you men care to bear with me or not, but I was just 

 trying to fill in and kill a little time here as we go along. 



But as I was saying, I never could quite understand how an 

 Iowa farmer, and especially if he owned his farm, could make up 

 his mind to raise grain and sell it and continue to mine his soil in 

 that kind of a way and haul the fertility to that elevator or to some 

 other feeder in his community, haul the fertility off through his 

 grain year after year, and sell it either to the elevator to be shipped 

 out of the country or to a neighboring farmer to go back into his 

 soil. It is amazing that men who own Iowa farms can make up 

 their minds to do that, and yet they do do it. 



Now, as I started to say, just how the younger generation is 

 going to take to this live stock problem — it is a real problem. I 

 never saw a more discouraged bunch of young farmers than we 

 had in this country for about eighteen months, that is, especially 

 the men who had been dealing in live stock and in the feeding game, 

 when the deflation set in ; and you men know what happened. We 

 sold cattle for three and four dollars a hundred less than they cost 

 us. That was a terrific blow on the young man that was just 

 starting out, that hadn't had some of those rugged experiences to 

 go through in the years past that we older men had had to contend 

 with; and the facts were that we found discouraged men all over 

 the state, that were absolutely discouraged, heart-sick over the 

 feeding proposition, and declared that they would never feed an- 

 other steer, would have nothing more to do with it. 



