536 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



But I believe that the past year has given some of these young 

 fellows courage. In my circulating around among them I have 

 found an entirely different feeling among the younger men who 

 had gotten back into the game to some extent during the past year, 

 because they had made some money — their cattle had proved a 

 good investment. They saw the other man haul his corn off, either 

 to the neighboring farmer or to the elevator, and sell it for 30 or 

 35 or possibly 40 cents if he held it long enough, and they felt as 

 though the feeding game was not so bad after all. 



There is one thing about the feeding game. Of course we must 

 not expect that we are going to make big profits every year. 

 That is one thing that is impossible. You won't do that in any 

 business. And so that is one of the things that we older men have 

 learned. As long as we stay in the feeding game we will not expect 

 big profits every year, and occasionally we will have years that we 

 will have to take quite a severe loss, from a financial standpoint I 

 am speaking ; but when we stop and analyze the whole entire situa- 

 tion and what our farms would be if we hadn't entered into the 

 feeding game at all, and how we would have robbed the soil of its 

 fertility, and the productive value of our farms compared with 

 what they would have been under other conditions, why we sort of 

 congratulate ourselves after all and make up our minds, as Mr. 

 Carter has said, that, over a period of years, live stock feeding 

 pays. 



You can go all over this state — I don't suppose there is a man 

 in the audience that has driven as many miles over the state of 

 Iowa as myself, and I don't say that boastingly, because the work 

 that you people have given me has required this. I can just see 

 the outstanding difference when I get into a live stock community. 

 Why, you don 't even have to inquire. You can see it right on the 

 face of everything, that the live stock community is more pros- 

 perous than the communities where they raise grain and sell it — ■ 

 the state over. There are absolutely no exceptions to the rule at 

 all, and take it for a period of years there is not any question in 

 my mind but what the live stock farmer is going to be ahead in 

 dollars and cents besides the increased value that is conserved in 

 his soil to produce greater crops. 



Some day we are going to hand these farms down to the younger 

 generation. We old fellows won't be here always. That is one 

 thing that has impressed me, especially after my family began to 

 grow up and I realized that some day these children and these 



