74 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGHICULTURE. 



and then they realized that one-half of their capital, one cent, had 

 actually been spent. Still they were hungry and they split the other 

 cracker, realising what a dreadful thing it was, and just as they were to 

 take a bite, one said to the other: "George, what in the world would 

 mother say, if she knew how we were carrying on?" Now, I tell that 

 story to show you how strangely things develop in this country. In 

 Europe and in all old countries developments are slow, but things go at 

 lightning speed on our side of the water. These boys were troubled 

 because they had spent one cent. I am told that one of their grand- 

 sons, now a rich man in New York City, went with five others into a 

 leading hotel and had an ordinary dinner. What do you think they paid 

 for it? The bill amounted to over $65 for that one meal for six people. 

 The old man on the "Vermont hill was horrified to think of spending the 

 one cent, and yet so quickly does society change in this country that 

 in two generations paid over $10 apiece for a dinner and considered it 

 an ordinary thing. That is the way, at least one way, in which your 

 money and the interest on your money is being spent. Some day you 

 will wake up to the fact that most of your money is going into the hands 

 of middlemen and handlers and is being consumed, as a result, in this 

 way, and then you will keep more of it at home. I can give you an idea 

 of what you are doing by saying that your men out here on these rich 

 prairies are helping to support three families besides your own. In this 

 respect ycu are the mos'c benevolent people I ever heard of. I can demon- 

 strate that in part by a bit of my own experience. Last year I needed 

 one ton of baled hay to finish out my stock last spring. I bought the 

 hay in New York and by the time I got it into my barn, twenty-five miles 

 away from New York, it cost me just $19.75. Curious to find out what 

 the hay cost on the farm, I traced it back as well as I could and the 

 best price that I could get was $5.80 to the western farmers for a ton 

 of mixed clover and timothy. Since coming here and talking with your 

 farmers I have been told that probably that man received 80 cents 

 more than any of his neighbors could. Just realize what that means. 

 There was $13.95 of the price which I paid for the hay, which was 

 handed out to the railroads, the truck men and the commission men and 

 all the other fellows who stood in a long string between your farm and 

 mine. You talk about my little middleman behind the fence sucking that 

 cider through a straw; he was not a circumstance to the way these gen- 

 tlemen were sucking the dollars out of your pockets. 



I have told you how our markets have changed. Of course these 

 special things which I speak of are not common with all sections. They 

 are generally confined to the farms close by the large cities. As a rule 

 the soils near the towns are poor, but by taking advantage of these re- 

 markable opportunities farmers are able to obtain fair returns from small 

 pieces of ground. To take up a kind of farming which is in your line 

 I can give you two illustrations of what is done on soils further away 

 from the towns. First, I speak of a farm in Middlesex county. New 

 Jersey, some fifty miles south of New York. This farm is naturally good 

 soil, well located and contains about ninety acres. When Washington 



