164 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Just think, now, for a moment, what would have happened to this 

 country if this whole prairie country had been timber, so that it took 

 the whole life of a man to clear up a quarter section? Prices would 

 have gone just as they were before, before Illinois *was opened up. We 

 began to feel the low prices in Illinois in the '60's. When I first came 

 to Monmouth, old corn was selling at 10 cents and new corn at 8 cents. 

 •Then the war came on, and it took us ten years to make up the waste 

 of the war. Then in this country west of the Mississippi, from 1870 to 

 1900, we grew more corn than all the United States had grown before. 

 We slushed the world with cheap food at half the ccst cf its produc- 

 tion, if we count anything on fertility. We knocked the price of vs^heat 

 down at Liverpool 50 cents a bushel; in other words, we sold them 

 the wheat at 50 cents less than it was worth. Now we are getting back 

 to normal things. The cities must go through in the next twenty-five 

 years just what the farmers went through from 1870 to 1900, and it is a 

 good thing that the Argentine is opened up, and that reciprocity was 

 defeated — the biggest fool thing that the Cannadians ever did. And 

 why? Down at the bottom, because Canadian manufacturers wanted 

 to make a New England out of Ontario and get cheap food. So they 

 appealed to the patriotism of those people, just as our men with the 

 same cause would have appealed to our patriotism from 1870 onward. 



Under these circumstances we must begin to farm. We haven't 

 begun yet, except a man or two now and then, like those I am talking 

 to now. In the first place, we must have a rotation of crops. Then we 

 must go into some kind of live stock raising. As far as my observation 

 goes, it takes two acres of pasture to keep a thousand-pound steer. We 

 must get that down to one. You must learn to cultivate the pasture. 

 Never let clover get out of a blue grass pasture; if it gets out, put it in 

 again. Get your disc out in the spring of the year, when the frost is 

 coming out, and disc in your clover. You must feed silage to your cat- 

 tle until the clover begins to bloom. I was raised to that when a boy. 

 My father knew that he must not_feed clover until it got to that period. 



I approve of everything that has been said this afternoon; in fact, 

 I have been trying to say most of it for about twenty-five years. I am 

 glad to see those men from the experiment stations furnishing proof 

 that it is true. 



Man is greater than all his works, "^'ou must improve the type of 

 man before you can make much improvement in the type of live stock 

 or in farming. Therefore, you must get together; you must co-operate; 

 and you can't cooperate until you get to know each other and see what 

 bully, good fellows you are when you know each other and see the best 

 side of each other. Then, too, you must make life so pleasant on the 

 farms that your boys will not be fools enough to run away — except 

 some of them that aren't fit to be farmers anyhow, and you can send 

 them to town to become doctors and preachers. You must make every 

 township an industrial and social center, not by bringing out to the 

 country the amusements of the town, but by the amusements that be- 

 long to the country and grow out of the hearts of the people. That is 



