SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK-PART X. 579 



waiting for supper one of the students broke out after this manner, "Say, 

 fellows, did you hear the corn crank from Illinois yet?" The other re- 

 plied, "You ought to hear him; he is great." I thought it about time 

 for me to make inquiry, so I asked if he could talk ten minutes on corn 

 without running out. He replied, "He can talk a week and tell you 

 something new every day." This aroused my curiosity and I went dowa 

 the next morning to investigate. I found him there with his class with 

 samples of corn and a tape line studying it. He invited me to join the 

 class. I replied to him that I was just reconnoitering around and that 

 I was too old. I looked him over, a little man, from head to foot, and 

 wondered what he could tell me about raising corn after I had raised 

 thirty crops on one farm, enough to pay for 520 acres of land in one 

 body. He was persistent and courteous and in order to bluff him off I 

 told him if he would get me a seat I would try. He gave me a seat, set 

 down beside the corn, and strange to say, the room got warm and I be- 

 gan to sweat and what I knew about corn began to ooze out of the pores 

 and my admiration for the dapper Prof. Holden began to rise, and has 

 been rising ever since. 



I no longer see things in the same light. Life on the farm is full and 

 interesting every day. It is no longer a dreary round of following the 

 furrows. As we ride across the field with the fine implements the 

 implement makers give us now and watch the plows pear off the furrow 

 we not only see the soil prepared for the first stage of the preparation of 

 the soil for the plant, but we can see the Creator's process, the beginning 

 of the process of preparing plant food for the plant's use. 



The Iowa Agricultural College Short Course has been a iboon to Iowa 

 farmers and together here the man of 60 and the boy of 16, side by side, are 

 studying the laws that govern animal and plant life and see through 

 them the great Creator who gave it all to us. 



THE FUTURE POSSIBILITY OF IOWA AS A CORN GROWING STATE 



W. S. Eelley. Mondamin. Iowa. Before Harrison County Farmers' Institute. 



"Aye the corn, the golden hearted corn, that hath within its heart a health and 

 strength for all." 



In amy subject wherein we deal in the future it must of necessity be 

 largely speculative. It was not given to man to peep into the future; 

 the door is locked and sealed; and "no admittance" is written thereon. 

 But by reasoning from the known to the unknown we may often arrive 

 at conclusions which for all practical purposes are true and will come. 

 With this subject, the dreamer could unbind the chains that holds him 

 to earth and soar away amid ethereal blue, far, far above the maddening 

 crowd. With imagination hitched to a star unleashed from the practical, 

 the real and the ifs that abound on every farm, Iowa's corn could feed 

 the world. That there has been an awakening in recent years in the 

 growing of corn all will admit and much good has been accomplished. 

 That the field has been but partially explored — tunneled along the edges, 

 as it were — Is also a fact. 



