106 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



potato harvesters, and they harvested those potatoes, while I gathered 

 some of the largest ones and put them up on the separator. It was such 

 a striking exhibit that farmers came around there and were interested 

 in it, and I know of scores of farmers who carried away armsful of 

 potatoes. But I will guarantee they will never raise potatoes like those 

 again. That is one illustration of practical work and showing how to 

 do it. 



Now I want to talk to you gentlemen on another subject. You know 

 as well as I do that there is not one man in a thousand nowadays that 

 can build a hay stack or a straw stack or a grain stack, but from the 

 Mississippi to the Missouri, and from the Missouri to the Rocky Moun- 

 tains you do not see a well built straw stack. Now, I made a little per- 

 sonal investigation and am perhaps a little bit egotistical, but think I can 

 build a straw stack with any man that lives or ever has lived or ever 

 will live. I can build a stack that will shed water with any roof in the 

 State of Iowa, but such a thing takes care in building. In these days 

 farmers do not do that, and I believe that they don't like to see such 

 work done. They don't know how to build a straw stack, a hay stack or 

 a grain stack that will shed water when it rains, and we have come to 

 the point now where they are threshing from the shock, one of the most 

 pernicious habits that any man can get into. One of my tenants last 

 year had his grain threshed from the shock — he was the last man on the 

 round, and it cost me $250 as a result. That man could have stacked 

 his grain but he didn't do it. If I was in the legislature I would compel 

 men to stack grain, and it would save millions of dollars for the state of 

 Iowa. You go around and see the way the farmers waste grain, and how 

 they waste their land. I didn't happen to be born in America, but I am 

 an honest, loyal citizen, and I like the old "Star Spangled Banner", but 

 I object to seeing the grain fields painted with the stars and stripes where 

 the planter leaves bare spots. Now, such things as that could be taught 

 at our county and state fairs, and I believe that in a little while we will 

 learn improved agricultural methods. 



Why, gentlemen, it is a disgrace to Iowa! You will hear the annual 

 report read tomorrow by the Crop Service Bureau of the yield of grain, 

 and it will disclose that of corn it averaged less than forty bushels an 

 acre. Why isn't it fifty or sixty? For forty years of farming I averaged 

 over sixty bushels, taken over a series of years; but we have laws on 

 this and that, and we have had a lot of agitation on account of the poor 

 quality of the seed corn, and yet because men do not follow tried and 

 proven methods of gathering and curing seed corn we have lost $500,000,- 

 000. And this year, while we have been told there was a big crop of 

 corn in the country, we didn't have but about two-thirds or three-quarters 

 of the stand of corn that we should have had. You cannot raise good 

 corn without stalks, and you cannot grow stalks without good seed. I do 

 not anticipate much trouble on account of seed corn this next year, be- 

 cause we had a good fall and our seed corn has been thoroly dried, but 

 last year it didn't dry, and, gentlemen, there is only one way that seed 

 corn can be saved and that is by picking it carefully and taking it into 

 the dwelling house and fire-drying it. There is not a farmer in this 



