420 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



". That said plan shall not be limited to securing the welfare of any 

 single class or interest, but shall be designed to assure justice to the pro- 

 ducer and consumer alike, and to bring safety and prosperity to all the 

 people of our common country, 



"3. That said plan shall recommend no change for the sake of change, 

 nor accept any ancient wrong as constituting a vested right. 



"4. That the making, maintenance and protection of prosperous 

 homes is the first object of government, and that the most valuable of 

 all citizens is the man who owns the land on which he grows the crops 

 that yield his living. 



"5. That the labor of men's hands is prior in time and superior in 

 right to accumulations of capital, and that a government does better when 

 it helps a poor man to make a living for his family than when it helps a 

 rich man to make more money. 



"6. That a community of interests exists among all workers, whether 

 on or off the farms, and that it should be expressed in common action for 

 the common good. 



"7. That the public good comes first; that pay for services not ren- 

 dered is an unjust charge upon the whole community; that a monopoly 

 used for private ends is always wrong; and that the whole nation suffers 

 whenever the standard of living for any class or any family falls below 

 the level of decency, eflSciency and self-respect. 



"8. That the people in American cities are fed in considerable part 

 by the unpaid labor of the women and children on American farms, and 

 that it is of the first importance to both that the country producer and the 

 city consumer should understand each other. 



"9. That farming is a highly skilled profession, which should be 

 paid no worse than equal skill elsewhere, and that the trained farmers of 

 America are worth more to the nation than the lands they cultivate." 



I have been greatly impressed in the last year or two by the fact that 

 the farmers of the United States are competing on unequal terms with 

 the organized people who are opposing them. In the first place, they are 

 competing against a unified organization without unified power to meet 

 it; in the second place, against trained economic knowledge without that 

 knowledge themselves. I have seen no more valuable suggestion for the 

 benefit of the future of the farmers of this country than the proposal 

 made by your secretary for a school of economics, in which most of the 

 farmers would be prepared to meet the members of capital and labor. 



If any one thing has been beaten into me in the course of a good 

 many years of experience with farm questions in the United States, it is 

 that until there should exist in this country an organization strong enough 

 to speak with one voice for the farmers from one end of the nation to the 

 other, the farmers will never get -what is justly their due in any one of the 

 great fields of the world we are obliged to meet in competition with the 

 organized powers we have got to fight. 



