THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 171 



great central government with local home rule that we compelled peace 

 and respect and order at home and abroad. That is what state govern- 

 ment is. 



Let me give you a concrete illustration of what it means, this home 

 rule, as compared to national government rule. Suppose the Iowa State 

 Railroad Commission should advance freight rates on canned fruit and 

 vegetables, and two thousand other articles. Wouldn't there be a howl 

 raised over this state? You would demand the reason for it. That is 

 precisely what has been going on in the nation. It is so far away that 

 we hardly realize it when it does occur. You have heard a great deal 

 about the woolen schedule, and Schedule K is almost a household term. 

 I wonder what ones of you here realize that during the past year the 

 railroads proposed an advance on canned fruits and vegetables throughout 

 this whole v/estern part of the nation. The action of the state govern- 

 ment is closer home. A few men can get together and push through a 

 proposition of importance. You yourselves know that a few people in 

 this association were able to do it. Y&u folks were able to suggest a com- 

 merce counsel law in Iowa, a department of government of great impor- 

 tance and value. If that had been undertaken in the nation, you would 

 have failed. As a matter of fact, it has been undertaken in the nation, 

 and it has failed up to the present time. But we succeeded in Iowa. 



A few years ago we adopted an anti-discrimination law, compelling the 

 sale of products for the same price in different parts of the state, after 

 making due allowance in the freight rates. That law has been copied in 

 a dozen different states in the nation. It has since been upheld by the 

 supreme court of Iowa, and a dozen different courts. That same law they 

 tried to introduce in the nation, and it never got through. It is not yet 

 made a statute by congress, and it probably will not be for years and 

 years to come. You had slavery abolished in this country in states long 

 before you ever had slavery abolished in the nation. You had a pure food 

 law in the states before you had it in the nation. You had temperance 

 law^s in the states long before you had them in the nation, and the action 

 just recently of the United States congress recognizing and enforcing the 

 action of the state relative to temperance laws drives home the value 

 and the importance of having state regulation. I hope that this system 

 of state and national government will continue. Every important step 

 of progress along these lines during the past generation has originated 

 with the states and not with the nation. We had regulation in this state 

 twenty years ago — the real article twenty years before they ever had it 

 in the nation. Fifteen or twenty years ago the supreme court said valu- 

 ation was the basis of all rate making, and there have been ten different 

 states valued their property since then, and congress has been dilly-dal- 

 lying with it all these years, doing nothing and accomplishing nothing 

 along those lines. I simply want to impress upon you what I think is 

 one of the important lessons that I have learned during the past year, 

 that there is value in the state government, in the preservation of her 

 proper functions, and I hope you will jealously do your part in guarding 

 that. 



