EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII 395 



secure the advantages that they can get elsewhere. On the other hand, 

 thousands of men would be glad to live out five or ,ten miles from to.vn, 

 and raise their families under rural conditions, if they could have the 

 social conditions in the country that they find in the towns and cities. 

 Nearly every man I ever met who left the farm gave as his reason thai 

 he wanted to give his children school advantages. We are solving this 

 problem somewhat with these consolidated schools, but we are far behind 

 other states in that respect. 



I myself believe that we must have more good roads. Fifty years ago 

 we devoted all our energies to securing the transcontinental railroads, 

 and every one of them that passes thru our state is of enormous valUL 

 to it; but the wagon road is infinitely more important to the state than 

 the railroad. The prosperous towns are going to be on the great wagon 

 roads; the great automobile lines of traffic are going to determine the 

 desirability of property, and we are making a mistake if we do not wake 

 up to what it means to support California in the winter and New England 

 in the summer. You can not imagine the amount of money that is being 

 taken out of this state. Do you suppose the Pennsylvania Dutch built 

 five hundred miles of paved highway across the mountains of that state 

 for amusement or to entertain their friends? Do you suppose the Yankees 

 of New England have covered the mountains of Vermont and New 

 Hampshire with paved highways simply to allow their money to be 

 spent? My friends, they have built those roads because it is to their 

 advantage to do so, and California and Oregon and Washington are doing 

 the same thing. If the states of Iowa and Minnesota would build a 

 scenic highway from Keokuk to Minneapolis, along the bluffs of the 

 Mississippi river, it would draw thousands of people. It is one of ihe 

 things that we can not afford to ignore. 



In a larger sense there are other lines of division in the United 

 States. I thijik one of the most serious problems before this country 

 is found in the dividing lines of race. It has been the bane of the world 

 from the beginning. There are more Indians in the United States today 

 than when Columbus landed. You may think that is a very strange state- 

 ment, but if you write to the Department of the Interior you will find it 

 is true. The Indians are a small part of our population, and yet they 

 are a part of us. Ten per cent of the American people are negroes. I 

 want to say to you tonight that no permanent and enduring civilization 

 can be built up on a submerged tenth of the population. 



We had a training camp for negro officers at Port Des Moines. There 

 never was a finer body of men gathered anywhere in the United States. 

 Forty per cent of them were college graduates. Six hundred of those 

 men were enlisted as captains in the army. There were no guards upon 

 the street cars running to Fort Des Moines; there was not a single com- 

 plaint from any passenger. There are six or eight thousand colored men 

 from the south today in this camp; they are in training to go out to 

 fight, i am not here to say to you what the social basis of the race is 

 going to be, but it must in some way be based upon fair play. We must 

 solve the problem fairly, and eliminate in some way that line of division. 



