104 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



done more for the farmej-s of Iowa (I think I can say that truth- 

 fully) than any other man engaged in his line of work. We will 

 hear from Uncle Henry Wallace : 



CONDITIONS OF COUNTRY LIFE. 

 IlKNKY Wai.laci:, Des Moines, Iow.\. 



Ml". President, and Gentlemen of the Convention: Mr. Simpson has 

 suggested that I tell you something about the work of the Country- 

 Life Commission. I can only hit the high places, but will give you 

 first a very brief outline of our methods and our objects. 



The object of President Roosevelt in appointing that commission 

 was to ascertain the facts about country life — the life of the people 

 living in the open country — at first hands from themselves, to know 

 what they had to say about it and how well vhey were satisfied. There- 

 fore he appointed five men: Prof. L. H. Bailey, dean of the Agricultural 

 College of Cornell University; Kenyon Butterfield, president of the Massa- 

 chusetts Agricultural College; Gifford Pinchot, of whom you have all 

 heard; Walter H. Page, editor of the World's Work; myself; and sub- 

 sequently added C. S. Barrett, president of the Farmers' Union of the 

 South ( a body with 1,780,000 persons in active membership and paying 

 their dues, which in itself is a most surprising thing), and W. A. Beard, 

 who had been in agricultural work upon the Pacific coast. We sent 

 out 500,000 circulars asking questions on- several points — sanitation, edu- 

 cation, co-operation, transportation, communication, banking, the tenure 

 of lands, the conditions of labor — and we received 125,000 answers, some 

 frivolous, some covering only one or two points, but most of thexB ex- 

 ceedingly serious. It was a good deal to have 125,000 men sit down 

 and answer those questions in detail, and in itself was an education. I 

 sent out myself some 28,000 circulars asking questions specifically on 

 tenancy, land ownership, and labor, and received about 8,000 answers. 

 Then in addition we received a vast amount of matter — essays, arguments, 

 data — from men who were particularly interested in some one thing. We 

 have not been able to read more than simply samples of all this vast 

 mass of information, which Sir Horace Plunkett, who knows something 

 about it, says is the most valuable contribution to agriculture that has 

 ever been made anywhere, and congress refused to furnish $25,000 for tne 

 purpose of tabulating the data and placing this matter where it could 

 be within reach of men who were students — and that on the motion of 

 Tawney of Minnesota, the only standpatter in the whole state! 



In addition we made visits to twenty-five states and received delegates 

 from thirty-five or forty. We simply called together at some convenient 

 point by invitation on our own letter-heads, men who were reported 

 to us to be competent to give testimony. We had from fifty to five 

 hundred at these meetings, of which we have brief stenographic notes. 



Now, there are two or three points of our Investigation that may 

 interest you. First, on the question of sanitation. We found the coun- 

 try all over unsanitary — most unsanitary in the South, where they have 



