308 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
have been contributing our thousands to the upbuilding of other sections 
while we have failed to attract many to us. This is serious. 
We are a good deal like a merchant I one time knew. I was employed 
on a country newspaper. My official title was foreman. The force con- 
sisted of a 16-year old girl who was there two days a week, a boy who 
helped on Thursday nights and Saturdays and myself. My duties were to 
set all the type I could, write all the local news I could and get all the 
advertising I could. One day I called on the proprietor of quite the largest 
store in town. (They called it the "Bee Hive.") He wasn't advertising. 
I explained who I was and started in to give him a talk on our immense 
circulation and to say that if he would let me write his ads and print 
them in our paper there'd be so much business coming his way that he'd 
have to rent the next building in a week or two, but he rather rudely 
interrupted me by saying: "Young man, I've been in business here for 
twenty years. I built the first store in this town. I've got the biggest 
store here today, I know every family in this county and everybody trades 
with me. What do I want to advertise for?" I was considerably squelched 
so sneaked out as quietly as I could. The next week a young fellow came 
to town and opened the same kind of store right across the street. He 
jumped in with a page ad and kept on pounding away with page and 
half-page ads. In six months the once busy man at the Bee Hive was 
looking rather worried; in a year he had mighty little trade left, and in 
eighteen months he sold the remains of his run down stock for what he 
could get and went back east to live with his wife's relation. 
Iowa may well take a lesson from him. We have too long been folding 
our arms, looking complacently out over the fields of plenty and congra- 
tulating ourselves that everybody knows all about Iowa. 
And while we sit still in supreme satisfaction, the states to the north, 
the states to the south, and those on the east and west are reaching in 
and silently snatching out thousands of citizens who imagine they see 
the land of promise elsewhere than in Iowa, and thousands more pass us 
by on their way to the untried but well advertised west. 
Is there a better state in all these United States than Iowa? Are there 
better opportunities anywhere in agriculural, mercantile or manufacturing 
lines than right here in Iowa? Is there a better dairy section on earth 
than right here in Iowa? Are there better people, better churches, better 
schools anywhere than right here in Iowa? 
Then why not tell the world about it. 
Iowa needs to advertise her resources and her opportunities. She needs 
to advertise, first, to open the eyes of her home people and keep them here, 
and second, to attract outsiders to her. 
If Kansas today would pay the debt she owes her advertising man. 
Secretary F. D. Coburn, he would be as rich as Croesus. If it hadn't been 
for Coburn the winds and drouths and grasshoppers would be all we would 
know of Kansas. Every time somebody raised a big hog in Kansas Co- 
burn told about it. Every time somebody raised a big crop of grain Co- 
burn told about it. Every time the hens laid well or the turkeys were 
numerous, Coburn told about it. Every time they cut alafalfa Coburn 
told about it. And he told it well. His pen has been working night and 
