FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 283 



solitude. It is against his nature. God never made him so. He made 

 him to live with his fellows and it is one of the greatest forces of our* 

 lives, our social nature. We want it, we want to be with our fellows. 

 We are gregarious to a great degree, and in the young folks it is stronger 

 yet even than with us, and when you find young people isolated in life, 

 especially when they begin to grow into manhood or womanhood, if you 

 could get within their hearts and feel every throb that comes, you would 

 find a great force that pulls them away from that condition. And if you 

 asked me to explain why it is that the young people have left the farms 

 and gone to the cities and towns, I would explain it by the fact as much 

 as any other, that because of that social impulse that was not satisfied 

 upon the farm, being so isolated, hence they fly away. These conditions 

 ought to be changed, must be changed. I am with Governor Clarke when 

 he says that the farmers are better off today, they are more intelligent, 

 they have more to do, and understand how to do it better, producing 

 greater wealth, growing in every particular, than they did in former 

 years when he and I were boys down in Davis county. I agree with that 

 proposition. But I want to tell you, my friends, these social conditions 

 ought to be changed as much as possible anyhow, they ought to be brought 

 to them or near them so that they will be satisfied. Farm labor within 

 itself as mere labor is not so terrifically hard. I don't believe it is as 

 hard as practicing law, gentlemen. But that is not the point. It is the 

 eternal grind. That is what cuts his life. It is not merely following the 

 plow a few weeks in the spring, or a few months, pitching hay or any- 

 thing of that kind. That is not so particularly hard, but it is that eternal 

 grind continuing out there month in and month out, and year in and year 

 out, as my nephews told me when I was down in Oklahoma. They are 

 bright young fellows. They went from this state down there and started 

 their farms, and I went down to see them and they were doing splendidly. 

 I said, "Boys, you seem to be doing well." They said, "Well, uncle, we 

 are doing well enough making money." I said, "You have your schools 

 started?" "Yes." "Don't you have any churches?" They answered, "Oh, 

 yes; they send us an old guy out here to preach to us once in a while." 

 "Don't you have any other social life?" "Not much, uncle," one of the 

 boys said. "I am going to get out just as soon as I get a little money. 

 It is a grind, and I am not going to stand it." And they are both gone 

 away. I just showed that as an illustration. At the same time these 

 conditions could be overcome, and we ought to overcome them in Iowa. 

 We can overcome them in Iowa, and how? By increasing the efficiency 

 and the power of all that class of institutions that the people love. May 

 I speak here, to a man who does not belong to a church, if he thought 

 that there ought to be and must be, throughout the entire county, places 

 where men may go and preach and sing and pray, and teach others to 

 preach and sing and pray, is that an important feature? Do we have it 

 in the rural communities? Very, very, few. Why, when these gentlemen 

 sang of the little church in the dale it carried me back to forty years 

 ago. Really, I felt more like going to tears than to cheers when they 

 sang about the little brown church in the dale. But it is not there now, at 

 least I don't know where it is. Shall these things be looked at? Surely, 



