EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII 373 



a fraction of one per cent interest when they are trying to fight the 

 battles of humanity by producing food. If there are any farm loan 

 /'ompany representatives in this audience who are figuring on stinging 

 the farmers of Iowa for a commission on their next farm loan renewals, 

 I hope they will take that home and chew it over. I have due regard 

 for the ethics of business. I am a business man and a banker, and I 

 believe in a legitimate and reasonable profit; but I want to say to you 

 that any farm loan institution that tries to take advantage of the ne- 

 cessities of the farmers of America today, and to handicap you in per- 

 forming your duty to your government, when you, like every other 

 patriotic, loyal American citizen, are fighting the battles of your coun- 

 try and of humanity, just as truly as the man who shoulders a rifle and 

 goes to the trenches, is an ally of the kaiser, and ought to have the iron 

 cross. 



(Mr. Odell then gave an eloquent tribute to the enlisted men of this 

 country.) 



Now, it so happened, in the providence of God — for there is a God 

 who is over us all — that that thing which human foresight could not 

 anticipate has come to shock the world and that today there rests upon 

 this republic of the western hemisphere the supreme duty of making 

 sure and safe the foundations of human liberty for all the generations 

 of the future; and it so happened also, my friends, in the providence 

 of God, that this perhaps the wisest and best conceived piece of legis- 

 lation that has ever been engrossed upon the statute books of any 

 nation was established for the financing of the farmers of the present 

 and future generations; and when you have organized in your local 

 communities one of these simple little cooperative farm loan associa- 

 tions, of which we have nearly 250 in the state of Iowa today, you are 

 building greater things than you can possibly conceive. You may do 

 the things which serve your own immediate need to relieve your own 

 personal extremities, to cut off a little bit of excess charge here, a little 

 profit there, to make sure and safe the holding together of that farm for 

 your family against the day when you shall go on to "the borne from 

 which no traveler ever returns," but when you organize that little insti- 

 tution in your community, you are establishing safe and sure the foun- 

 dations of that community for the boys and girls who will make the 

 farmers of the future in the state of Iowa. Listen a minute: 



One hundred and forty-eight years ago, the government of the king- 

 dom of Prussia found itself bankrupt. It was unable to collect its taxes 

 from the land-holding nobility. The lands were all in the hands of the 

 barons, and when the barons were not making war upon tljeir neigh- 

 bors they were spending their time in riotous living and profligacy. Their 

 estates were being wasted, their tenantry were impoverished, produc- 

 tion had fallen to the point where the people were starving; and because 

 the government of Prussia was unable to collect any taxes from these 

 barons, it was faced with the extinction of its royal revenues. King 

 Frederick the Great took up this matter with one of the wisest German 

 financiers of that day. Doctor Fischer, an expert on taxation. He broached 

 the idea of pooling the indebtedness of all these land-holding barons in 



