THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 169 



other one question, that is of such vital interest today to the meat-pro- 

 ducing interests of the United States as that of the ship subsidy proposi- 

 tion. I consider that the vital point. Also I am fearful for this great 

 canal and the regulations which are going to be put into effect on the 

 great canal, because it looks to me to be the opening wedge looking 

 towards the subsidy proposition. And as sure as we sit here tonight, if 

 that subsidy goes into effect, you will find that our meats will come 

 in competition with all the meats of other countries, and I believe that that 

 will sound the death-knell to the present values that you are now re- 

 ceiving, and even if our farms are kept up to this high fertility at which 

 we now have them, that the values of the products which we grow on 

 those farms will be depreciated very materially. I do not care to say 

 how much, but I do undertake to say that when you come in competition 

 with the cheap labor of South America and the Central American and 

 Mexican states, that the values which we now get will be very materially 

 depreciated. You need not think for a moment that those men who are 

 thinking, as Uncle Henry says, in world-wide ideas, are for one moment 

 forgetting that they control today all of the machinery for putting this 

 meat into the hands of the consumer, and that is- the first step which 

 they are going to take to bring that into effect, because the more that 

 they use, the better opportunity they have to reap their reward. It looks 

 to me as if that was the keynote to the situation, and the thing for us to 

 do is to put forth our efforts in every reasonable way to hold the bal- 

 ance of trade where it now exists for us here in the United States, and 

 that is one of the future things which this association must undertake — 

 the education of the people along those particular lines. (Applause.) 



The Toastmaster: I suppose it is only fair to the gentlemen whom I 

 may call out to say that it has always been our custom here to feel free 

 to call upon any man who looked guilty, without any previous warning. 

 Of course some of our visitors may have a haunting suspicion that they 

 are likely to be called out, but our members never do have. I want to say 

 this to you, that gentlemen in Des Moines who have attended our ban- 

 quets have repeatedly told me after they were over that they were the 

 best banquets and the best speeches that they had heard in this city. 

 And if we had time to go through, I think we could take seventy-five per 

 cent of the men who sit around this table and get some good speeches 

 from them without any previous warning. 



Now, I am going to follow that policy tonight, so far as our time lasts, 

 and I feel perfectly free in doing it because I know our members H ill 

 acquit themselves creditably. 



We can not think back on the early days of the association and the 

 fight we have been through without unconsciously thinking of one man 

 who bears a good many scars in our behalf. He has reached what may 

 seem to us pleasanter days just now than he enjoyed with us a few years 

 ago, and yet I venture to say that if he told the real story of his expe- 

 riences the past year, he would say that the troubles he had in our as- 

 sociation were small indeed compared with what he has had since he left 



