FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 87 



ADDRESS. 

 By Woodwoutii Clum, Clinton, Iowa. 

 Mr. President and Gentlemen: 



I am glad to be here, although our President of the Greater Iowa 

 Association is detained in Chicago on account of his interest in the "Foot 

 and Mouth Disease." If I have to go around the state much oftener I 

 will have to suffer from the foot disease. Some people say that I am a 

 ■■'ictim of the n outh disease. But, however that may be, I am going to 

 try to tell you -very briefly what we have done in getting the Greater 

 Iowa sentiment clifCused universally in Iowa; and that is what we have 

 done. The Greater Iowa spirit has been here long before I came to 

 Iowa, anr. long before we inaugurated this Iowa movement. The only 

 thing we endeavoied to do in this Iowa movement was to centralize 

 this spirit for a Greater Iowa. We only tried to take what has here- 

 tofore been an individual state pride and make it a collective state 

 pride. £ome cf us have known what Iowa is individually, but the 

 trouble is that most of the people outside of Iowa don't know it. 



Many years ago there was a saying ascribed to Emerson, though it 

 was not original with him. It was first made by a preacher down in 

 New York State. It was this: "The man that writes a better book, 

 preaches a better sermon, or makes a better mouse trap than his neigh- 

 bor, through he buiidr a home in the wilderness the world will beat a 

 path to his door." As I say, that is ascribed to Emerson, but he did not 

 write it first. It was written by an old New York preacher and Emer- 

 son was keen enoiigh and knew enough to grasp it and wrote in his 

 lectures and books the sentiment that "A man who writes a better 

 book, preaches a better sermon, makes a better mouse trap, or does 

 something better than his neighbor, though he build a home in the 

 wilderness, the world will beat a path to his door." That was not true 

 at the time it was written and it is not true today. There were three 

 words the old preaoho;' should have put in, and I trust you will your- 

 selves add those three words to make that quotation correct "that 

 though a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, make a bet- 

 ter mouse trap, though he build his home in the wilderness, the world 

 will make a path to his door provided he advertises. How many men 

 of genius have gone down to an ignominious finish because their neigh- 

 bors did not know of their genius. You can think of men, you know of 

 men who have accomplished great things in their little sphere who would 

 have amounted to a great deal more if they had only advertised the fact 

 that they did have a skill in excess of their neighbors. Now, we found 

 out that if we were to do anything with this Greater Iowa movement, we 

 had to watch our neighbors, not only Minnesota, Missouri and Illinois, but 

 we had to keep our eye on all of them. To illustrate, I will tell you a 

 little experience I had. Two years ago, — you who have attended the horse 

 racing out here will appreciate the story. I was down in Louisville two 

 years ago in the October season, when all Louisville is permeated with a 

 horse-racing atmosphere. I went out to the great tracks they have there 



