498 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



farms and hand them over to our children and grandchildren in 

 as good condition as we received them, we must stay in the stock 

 business, even if it doesn't mean quite as much ready money to 

 use right at the time, and at the same time remain in the Corn 

 Belt Meat Producers' Association, for the two go hand in hand. 



Jerome Smith : That is all right, and I wish I could see it so ; 

 I am tr)'ing to. I settled on a farm forty-one years ago, but how 

 can 1 expect my children to stay there? The best lot of men in 

 the world are right here, and nine out of ten men in the cattle 

 l)usiness say they are losing money. I have fed cattle — more often 

 less than more — and havt) managed to get enough to live on, but 

 liaven't accumulated any great amount. I suppose that I ought to 

 ))e satisfied to keep fixing that land, and let my neighbors raise 

 their 60-cent corn and get the money, while I am just making a 

 farm for future generations. Of course I am going to do that ; I 

 am the only man in our country who hasn't a farm for sale; but 

 at the same time it is costing me too much. The last remark Pro- 

 fessor Pew made was that he lost money feeding cattle. The man 

 who fed a large amount made some money. I would like to know 

 where our children are going to get off at if we are going to farm 

 at a loss until we learn some other way. We have been coming 

 here for ten years learning how to do farming and sell at a profit, 

 l)ut now Uncle Henry says that we can't farm at a profit until 

 we learn different methods. I have been reading AVallaces' Farmer, 

 but that doesn't come out quite so square as he did. 



Mr. Fowler: I don't want to take up your time, ])ut I expect 

 I have studied this proposition for the past twenty years as much 

 as any man in the state. You gentlemen have the greatest oppor- 

 tunity to produce of any gentlemen in a given territory on the 

 face of the earth ; all you have to do is to get after the job as near 

 right as you can. There is an opportunity for this state to make 

 fifty million dollars more per annum than now and not do nearly 

 as nuich work. Captain Smith says that by a combination of grass 

 and grain he is able to effect a wonderful saving in the production 

 of beef. A hog is just as much a grazing aiiinud as the steer, and 

 there is just as great or greater opi)ortunity to save on him as thei-e 

 is on the steer. And what is the greatest hindrance to that? It 

 is over-estimating the value of the skim milk. I wrote some poetry 

 lliat tli(\v tell me is worth a million dollars. A man from Kansas 

 told me he saw it in the Kansas City Star, and he bought three; 

 car loads of hogs and fed them on pasture, and he said it was the 



