THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 177 



roads have all been built in this country. This country has been deveh 

 oped within that time, and this stock that you men own has been devel- 

 oped so that it is a higher grade and a better grade of stock than Moses 

 or Abraham or any other man that lived back of a hundred years ago 

 ever knew of or thought of having. The fact of the business is that there 

 was no man that lived a hundred years ago who ever thought that we 

 would have such a country as we have here now. Absolutely beyond the 

 dream of any man who lived a hundred years ago. And yet I think we 

 are just simply beginning in this country — just beginning. 



We are just beginning to do things after a permanent sort of a fashion, 

 just beginning to think of questions of that kind. We are just beginning 

 to deal with the great problems with which hum.an life has to do, and it 

 has to do witli our methods of living and with the advancement of man- 

 kind. Only a few days ago the fire marshal over here laid on my desk 

 his report, and I looked over it, and I saw a report of the fires in the 

 state of Iowa, something like three thousand of them, with millions of 

 dol'ars of loss. And then I thought we are just beginning to build perma- 

 nent buildings here in Iowa, fireproof buildings. Just beginning, I say, to 

 do things in a permanent sort of way, getting our civilization, if you please, 

 upon a permanent, lasting foundation. It never has been in the history 

 of the world upon what we call a permanent, sound, solid foundation. 



And so I say v*'e are coming up here tonight and discussing these 

 questions here, and although the world is thousands of years old, we are 

 just at the beginning, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But 

 I tell you we do know that here in Iowa we shall be one of the greatest 

 states in the Union. Mr. Thorne, over there, talked about the commerce 

 of this country, and about the control of commercial affairs in this coun- 

 try, about state and interstate commerce, and the thought occurred to me 

 that after all a country is just exactly what its commerce is, no more nor 

 no less. Its commerce measures exactly what a country or what a people 

 is. It is an exact measure of it. And whoever, if you please, controls the 

 commerce of a country controls the destiny of that country. (Applause.) 



Men talk about these great transcontinental lines of railroad across 

 this country and the wonderful traffic that is carried by them, absolutely 

 beyond the conception of any man who sits at these tables tonight, these 

 arteries of commerce here. They constitute the very life-blood of this 

 nation, the very life-blood of it. And I say measures what this nation is 

 and what the commerce of this country is to be in the future, is an 

 exact measure and prophecy of what this nation shall be in the future. 

 And I think it is absolutely essential that the people of this country 

 control, if you please, the commerce and the traffic and the means of 

 transportation, because if they do they control the destinies, I say, of the 

 country. So I think, with others who have spoken tonight, that it is ab- 

 solutely essential that there should be this control. But Mr. Davis sug- 

 gests, why can't we move right along together? And why not now, 

 when you come to think of that question? Are your interests any differ- 

 ent, after all, from the interests of the railway company? Are not your 

 interests mutual? Can the one be developed without the other develop- 



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