FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 91 



sending them out of the state. We were out at San Francisco a few 

 years ago looking after these Iowa people. At half past 10 o'clock some 

 one suggested that we take a little luncheon at one of the hotels. At 

 12 o'clock, one hour and a half later there sat twenty-five young men, 

 every one of them between twenty-six and thirty-five years of age, and 

 Judge Deemer went around from man to man and said "Where did you 

 come from," and as I remember the statement every one of these twenty- 

 five young men were either graduates of Ames or Iowa City. Twenty- 

 five of them we got together in an hour and a half out in San Fran- 

 cisco, all working for another state, and building up another locality. 

 That is fine. If we are able to go into this missionary school it is all 

 right, but I don't believe it is the thing we ought to do. Let us give 

 them five per cent — let us be generous and give them ten per cent, but 

 let us keep the other twenty-five per cent at home. 



I think this is an excellent time to tell you men about this far-famed 

 Belgian proposition. It has been heralded in the papers all over what 

 the Iowa Boosters were gding to do with the hundred thousand Belgian 

 farmers. Let me tell you this, — because it has been somewhat covered 

 up and lost sight of — in our convention at Ames what we proposed was 

 this: We did propose to the organization that we take steps to bring 

 over a number of Belgian farmers who might take over a ten acre tract 

 under a twenty year contract to pay for it and who might go in and 

 work out their own destiny on this ten acre tract. There was no inten- 

 tion considered, or named, of bringing over the lame, the halt, the blind, 

 the crippled, the unworthy, or crooked or criminal classes. Our friends, 

 the enemy, have accused us of wanting to bring in the whole class, in- 

 cluding undesirables. What we did was to appoint a committee to go 

 around the state and make investigation and study the matter over for a 

 period of weeks and months if necessary, and then come back to the 

 people of Iowa — as the representatives of this association and recommend 

 that we do get some Belgians, or that we do not get some Belgians. That 

 is the status of the matter. Nobody need worry or be afraid that we 

 are going to go off half-cocked and drive out our Iowa farmers. Let 

 me tell you how the Belgian story works. After that story started I 

 got a letter from South Amana, written in a ladies' handwriting and 

 signed Mrs. F. R. Lewis. She said, "I see by the papers that the Greater 

 Iowa Association is going to bring over some Belgian farmers. I protest. 

 My husband and I are young people. We have lived in the city all of our 

 life until two years ago, when my husband's health demanded that we 

 go to the country. We had no money — just enough to get a small tract 

 of land and make the first payment and get in a small crop. Neither 

 of us ever saw an agricultural college or read an agricultural bulletin, 

 and we did not know a thing about agriculture. Since we have been here 

 — two years — we have read and studied various publications and tried 

 to brush up on agriculture, and I am glad to say that at this time my 

 husband and I are husking seventy bushels of corn to the acre; there 

 is not another farmer in this county that is doing it. The yield is 

 running from fifty to fifty-five bushels. We are studying farming, and 

 if you can get Iowa people all over to go into the cities and towns of 



