168 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



can people sailing the British flag, and they buy ships where they 

 can get them and put np the flag; that is all. So you want to get 

 your eyes open to that. 



That is rather a dark view, but taken in connection with what 

 I have said before, this competition from the Argentine, from 

 Canada, from Brazil, will tend to let down with comparative 

 ease the cities of the world which you have built up by working 

 for nothing and boarding yourselves. It will tend to ease the 

 tremendous strain that is going to come on the people all over 

 the world. I don't think I am a pessimist, but you know in 

 the last year there has been a revolution in Spain, martial law 

 in Austria, bread riots in France, a strike in London, a rebel- 

 lion in China; and they all came from the high cost of living, 

 together wdth the cost of high living. This must be let down, 

 but we don't want to see our ports thrown open to free meat or 

 free corn. If it had not been that there was a failure in the Ar- 

 gentine in corn last year, you would have seen any amount of 

 corn shipped into New York this year, as there was last year — 

 freight paid, tariff paid, manufactured, and shipped to the old 

 country at seven and one-half cents less than you can buy the 

 corn. You must make your pastures increase better ; you must 

 feed silage — summer silage, winter silage. You must quit butting 

 your heads against a stone wall by trying to make the cow give 

 milk out of stuff that has no milk in it, as, for instance, timothy 

 and corn. We never learn to walk except we fall down and bump 

 our head. You must quit bumping against nature and feed your 

 live stock with food convenient for it. Give them the rig^ht raw 

 material to get the results, and in that way we will get through. 

 "We needn't be afraid of the live stock business going out; it is 

 here to stay. The people will eat smaller pieces of meat and pay 

 a higher price for it, as has been said; but we can make it in 

 Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska cheaper than it can be made any 

 place on this continent or in Europe ; and if we put more brains 

 into the question we can make it as cheap as they can any where 

 else. Sir Joshua Reynolds w^as once asked how he mixed his 

 paints. He said "With brains." That is exactly the way we 

 must farm: with brains. We can't import new brain;;: .we must 

 make the best use of what we have. You will find out that you 

 can do things that twenty years ago you said coukhi't be done 

 at all. You have the soil, the climate, some of the best people 

 found anywhere in the world, and all you need to do is to develop ; 



