THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 183 



of the stalwart citizenship of the state that not only produces its 

 wealth and its material resources, but adds to the standard and the 

 dignity and the manhood of its citizenship. And I have been impressed 

 that you gentlemen here tonight around this banquet table are taking 

 a little bit of rest from the daily toil that you have in the management 

 and looking after of your farms and your stock interests, and that it 

 would be a good time and that it should suggest that there is something 

 more than simply broadening its acres, improving its fertility and the 

 improvements that are upon it, and raising the grade of your stock. 

 That you are getting beyond that, and saying that there is due from 

 each and all of you a service that is to be performed, a service — ^not 

 that in its narrower sense, but a service that includes everything that 

 tends to upbuild and to ennoble humanity, a service that every man 

 owes for himself, for his family, for his community, for his state, and 

 a service that must be performed before any man performs his duty, 

 and I believe that the service that comes m.ust be more than that to 

 gratify ambition and acquire a larger amount of wealth, a service that 

 brings good blood, not only to you gentlemen upon the farms and in 

 the stock fields, but to those of us who occupy and follow other pro- 

 fessions and other occupations. 



I began the work a little over a year ago with but little knowledge, 

 and have believed now, and have felt the feeling grow with me as the 

 years have come, that there was something more than simply per- 

 forming the daily routine of duties, som.ething more than simply look- 

 ing after and answering the immediate demands, but that there was a 

 call upon me as upon others, a stronger and higher duty and better 

 service in the interests of my people, and it is with that spirit that I 

 have undertaken, during the time that I have been endeavoring to fill 

 the office of commerce counsel, to give the service that I conceive is 

 due from every man and due from a public official. That serrice — the 

 best that we can do — wall not reach what we would desire, but it is a 

 service, when given w^ith all of the force and might, and with all of the 

 strength that is within us, is all that is asked, and when the service is 

 rendered, rewards shall come. 



The work has been pleasant in many respects. The work has been dif- 

 ficult in some particulars. It has been hard for me to change the habits 

 of a lifetime in the trial and in the management and disposition of cases. 

 There comes an investigation of nev/ questions. I have not felt that there 

 was any difficulty or trouble in determining the construction of statutes 

 or the application of the principles of law, for that I have felt I had in 

 some degree, in some measure, acquired during the years of a somewhat 

 active life. I say I felt but little embarassment with those questions, but 

 it was difficult when I had to sit down and take hold of questions or prob- 

 lems that were outside of the training that I had had during the years 

 before. I have done the best I knew how and I am ready to continue do- 

 ing that work so long as it shall be my duty to perform the duties of the 

 office and hold that position. 



Something was said about this being a great granary in the midst of 

 the greatest nation, and that within thie Mississippi valley will be found 



