324 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



We will open our exercises this evening with invocation by 

 Reverend J. W. McNary. 



The Chairman : The next on the program is a piano solo 

 by Miss Agnes Kouba, of this city. 



The Chairman : We will next have the Address of Wel- 

 come by Honorable Charles D. Huston, Mayor of Cedar Rapids. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 



HOX. CHAS. D. HUSTON. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen. — I esteem it a great pleasure 

 as well as a great honor to be permitted to attend this meeting, and bid 

 you welcome to the city. I take it for granted that all good people are 

 glad to come to Cedar Rapids; just as glad to come as bad people are 

 glad to get away. The fact that you have been met at the door by a 

 policeman is not to be taken as prima facie evidence that some of your 

 members are under suspicion, because there is not one among us who 

 would think that any of the members of the Iowa State Dairy Associa- 

 tion would carry anything away that does not belong rightfully to them. 

 No, my friends, the policemen are here to assist you in having a good 

 time, to ttnd anything that you may lose and return it to its rightful 

 owner. And more than that, — on Monday of this week we had a very 

 wet day and some of my friends thought it was going to be a wet week, 

 and some of your friends thought because of that many of you would 

 not come at all; but I want to say to you that no one should stay awav 

 from Cedar Rapids because it is wet in the morning, or because it is 

 wet in the afternoon, for I am here to assure you, each and every on*', 

 that you will always tind it dry enough in this city after ten o'clock 



at night. 



The city of Cedar Rapids is not the only city on the map of Iowa> 

 but it is one of them, and one that is growing all the time and growing 

 along correct lines. We have a citizenship that are ever and always 

 interested in the development and the betterment of this city, just as 

 you gentlemen are interested in the development and betterment of the 

 industry of the state of Iowa in which every man and woman should be 

 interested. 



According to the last census report Cedar Rapids was first of all 

 the good cities of Iowa in the matter of manufacturers, but even though 

 that be the case, Cedar Rapids has yet some good factory sites left, and 

 1 could have no greater pleasure than in welcoming to our city as per- 

 manent residents a number, a goodly number of the memJaers of the 



