FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 497 



to be a good farmer, and give him to understand — by law, if possible, as 

 they do in England — that he has a right to whatever he puts into that 

 land. The English theory of renting is that the land and all that is in it 

 and on it belongs to the man who put it there. Thus the tenant has no 

 interest in going away or looking for another farm, and the landlord 

 doesn't want to dispense with that tenant. So they stay from year to year 

 and from generation to generation. 



As to the kind of cattle to feed, I think Mr. Smith looks at it exactly 

 right. Feed the stuff that the other fellow doesn't want. My father gave 

 me a lesson in political economy when I was very young: Whenever 

 everybody wants to buy, you sell; when everybody wants to sell, you 

 buy. We have a great demand for baby beef, and the reasons given by 

 the gentlemen here are all right and sound. It may be different next 

 year, but your experience has been that the market wanted just what 

 you didn't have, and the reason was because you have been wanting to 

 have what the other fellow wanted to have, and you glutted the market. 



So let us in the first place be satisfied to live in Iowa. It is God's-coun- 

 try; it is the Mesopotamia of the new world. It is the one place where 

 the Lord did His best. Let us do our best to make this the best country, 

 with more good cattle, more good dual purpose cows, and more good 

 people, than any other state in the Union. In that case we will all be 

 happy. 



The President : I wish to say in connection with what Uncle 

 Plenry said concerning the going out of the feeding business that 

 in my work in the organization as president I have had som? ex- 

 perience along that line. I know what it is to go into communities 

 and have the leading corn belt men tell me that the boys have nearly 

 all quit feeding cattle, and they don't know what the situation will 

 be in regard to getting more members into the association. That 

 is just about as sad a thing as a man can have put up to him. A 

 lot of people in this state think that this is a feeder's organization, 

 and that nobody is entitled to membership in it unless he is a cattle 

 feeder. AVe have tried to convince them in the past few years 

 that farmers are eligible to membership if they don't feed cattle, 

 and have succeeded in inducing a good many such farmers to join 

 our association. But I just wanted to drop that word for your 

 benefit, that there has been a wonderful decline in the state of 

 Iowa in the last ten years, since this organization Avas formed, in 

 the feeding business. I find in going over the state communities 

 where we used to have large organizations of men who were prac- 

 tically all cattle feeders, that they have nearly all quit and gone 

 to raising corn, because thej^ could make more money out of it. 

 or at least they thought they could — and possibly they do for the 

 time being. Jf we are going to conserye the fertility of these Iowa 

 3? 



