FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART V. 237 



strongest, the most loyal young men and women gathered in this insti- 

 tution at this moment fhat ever came together for the purpose of devel- 

 oping their minds and strengthening their bodies, and we are housing 

 them in barracks that the army of the United States would reject for 

 its regular army. This is a misfortune to some extent and we aro 

 going to remedy it as soon as we can; but we have been floating along 

 here on the tide of prosperity and have been forgetting that here was 

 the instrument, the weapon by which these battles were fought, and they 

 need sharpening every day. 



I am not here to take up a subscription, mark you, but I want you 

 to feel well towards this institution, and I want you when the legis- 

 lature comes to consider what it should do for its enlargement and 

 development. I want you to look upon the work of the legislature with 

 a sympathetic and generous eye. It seems to me that the people of this 

 State are already reaping the profits of the work done in this field of 

 laDor. I honestly think that the agricultural department of the col- 

 lege at Ames will add 33 per cent to the value of every acre that is 

 planted in' corn in this State within the next five years. I say that with 

 knowledge. I know more about that than I do about butter-making. 

 I know that if the work being done here in the way of these investiga- 

 tions of science, coupled with this ancient and honorable profession of 

 agriculture, if even the propositions which this college, and all agri 

 cultural colleges, for that matter, — because it is not singular in that re- 

 spect, — if the propositions which they are putting before the farmers of 

 this country receive encouragement and are adopted, every acre of land 

 in this State devoted to corn will produce within the next five years 33 

 per cent more than it now does. No doubt that the light with vvhich 

 it and other institutions have supplied the business in which you are 

 engaged has added equally to its profit, to the productiveness of tl'.o 

 capital which you have employed. 



Now I want to say another word, and here I may tread on some- 

 body's toes — -I don't know. What I have said up to this time I am sure 

 you will all agree with; but I now come to a point that I have in 

 mind and it has become a sort of fad with me, I suppose, yet I believe 

 deeply in it. Here we are in Iowa, a great agricultural State it is now, 

 and it always must be the greatest agricultural State in the Union. I 

 repeat that there is no State in all the splendid sisterhood, taking all 

 the products of agriculture together, that is even a fair second to this 

 commonwealth. And that is because we have the best opportunity of 

 any other State in the Union. It is not because we know how to im- 

 prove these opportunities better than our brothers in other common- 

 wealths. But don't you believe that your butter would be worth more 

 if it could be consumed in the State of Iowa rather than sent to Chicago 

 and New York, or to the ports across the sea? In other words, I plead 

 for a diversification in industries in Iowa. I never expect to see this 

 State standing at the head in manufacturing; I never expect to see it 

 lead the procession in the great industrial fields other than agriculture, 

 but I do believe that there is opportunity here for a much higher place 

 in the ranks of manufactury than we have hitherto attained. Why the 

 tendency of this age is to take the manufactory to the raw material. 



