402 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



could not have been had you not been organized and in a position to 

 present your claims in a manner to demand consideration. In this 

 connection I wish to drop the suggestion that you and your interests 

 were not presented to legislative committees before the organization 

 of the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association, and unless you maintain 

 your organization and have men whose duty it is to look after these 

 matters at the proper time, you will have but little representation in 

 years to come. 



The calling of a special session of congress by President Wilson 

 soon after his inauguration, for the purpose of revising the tariff, and 

 the fact that the committee on ways and means in the house of repre- 

 sentatives, of which Mr. Underwood was chairman, had been conduct- 

 ing exhaustive hearings on the proposed bill, led your executive com- 

 mittee to carefully analyze that portion of the bill affecting live stock 

 and other farm commodities, resulting in the conclusion that the bill 

 was unfair to the farmer and stockman, and that a protest should be 

 made by your organization against those particular features, and an 

 attempt made to amend them, so as to give the farmer and producer 

 equal protection with the manufacturer. Accordingly, a committee con- 

 sisting of your president; Mr. J. F. Eisele, director from the sixth 

 district, and Mr. Charles Goodenow, your treasurer, was selected to 

 go to Washington about the first of May, to present our claims to the 

 senate finance committee, who were then considering the bill. On 

 arriving in Washington and making some investigation, your commit- 

 tee found itself up against a stiff proposition, as the atmosphere in all 

 of the big cities of the east was full of a clamor and demand on con- 

 gress to lower the cost of living, and especially to reduce the cost of 

 food products. We learned also that the finance committee had de- 

 cided that no public hearings would be held by that committee on the 

 bill, which decision meant that if anything was done by our committee 

 the matter must be taken up personally with each of the ranking mem- 

 bers of the senate committee. You can have some idea of the difficulty 

 of that task when you understand that there were hundreds of men in 

 Washington who wanted to see these same men on some part of the bill, 

 and hundreds more who wanted to see them about some political job. 



But we at once set about our heroic task, as we were determined 

 to present our claims to these senators before we left. Through the 

 courtesy of Senator Cummins, we were soon able to get into personal 

 touch with the men whom we wished to see, but even then our prog- 

 ress was slow, as they were exceedingly busy, and some were out of 

 the city, and it was very difficult to arrange suitable dates. In the 

 course of about ten days we succeeded in holding a very satisfactory 

 conference with each of the senators on the finance committee, whom 

 we felt would practically have the shaping of the bill in that commit- 

 tee. We were received very courteously by each of the senators waited 

 on. They seemed to appreciate hearing directly from the agricultural 

 producers of Iowa, and for the most part we found them in sympathy 

 with our position, which was simply that we were willing to stand a 

 reduction in the duties on live stock, dressed meats and agricultural 

 products, but that we did not think it fair to place our products on the 



