EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART II 117 



I have ridden for hours and hours, covering miles and miles, and have 

 never seen a pig; and it has got so that my little boys notice the absence 

 of the hog, and if we see a hog it makes us feel almost like seeing an 

 old friend walking down the street. That is the trouble with that sec- 

 tion today — the absence of stock. They have dairy cattle, and they are 

 advanced in truck farming, but they need at the present time more 

 livestock, more hogs, more beef, cattle, and more horses, and they are 

 waking up to that fact. And because we have all of those animals here 

 in abundance is the reason I say that Iowa never looked so good to me 

 before as it did this morning as I came down on the train. 



It seemed rather queer to me at first to think that these people should 

 attempt to build a great exposition in a section that had been and is at 

 the present time importing eighty per cent of what it consumes; but I 

 can see a reason for this move, for I was brought up with the thought 

 that an exposition is an educational institution. I suppose I have stated 

 that, and restated it, and spoken it, and written it, until it has become 

 shopworn to many of you, but nevertheless it is true. A fair or exposi- 

 tion, the Iowa state fair or the county fair, if it has not a place as an 

 educational institution, has no right to exist. I believe it has a right to 

 exist, and it takes rank with any other educational institution in the 

 country. 



I can remember when Gov. Harding was not governor of Iowa then (we 

 were of about the same age) that he was not always interested in the 

 state fair, but I suppose it was because Gov. Harding was not used to 

 attending the fair. He couldn't get the viewpoint of the educational side 

 of the show. In our part of the country where I am now engaged, of 

 which I told you something last year, they have spent something like 

 three-quarters of a million dollars, which has been procured through 

 stock subscriptions. The states themselves do not maintain great organ- 

 izations down there, as we do here, but the people who are doing this 

 are the manufacturers. This may surprise you and you will ask, "Are 

 they interested in agriculture?" They certainly are! They are interested 

 in it to this extent, and you may call it selfish: Those men down there 

 feel that they must reclaim and cultivate that land that once produced 

 crops, in order to produce more of what the people are consuming, to 

 reduce the high cost of living. The cost of living in the East is high. 

 I have heard folks talk to the contrary, but don't let anybody tell you it 

 doesn't cost any more to live in the East than it does out here. It costs 

 laboring men more to live down there, and the laboring man must neces- 

 sarily have a greater wage, and he receives a larger wage than he does 

 here; and if he receives a greater wage, that means that the manufacturer 

 puts out an article that costs more than his competitors farther west, 

 and that is why the manufacturies are themselves slipping. At one 

 time the entire boot and shoe industry of the United States was confined 

 within the New England states, but it has been slipping and slipping and 

 slipping. At the present time a large percentage of the boots and shoes 

 are still being made in that section, but it is coming west, and St. Louis 

 is now the center of the boot and shoe industry. The same is true of 

 the machine-tool industry. Providence, Rhode Island, used to be the 

 the center of this tool industry, and now it is Cincinnati, Ohio. And the 

 thing that is back of it all is the high cost of living. 



