342 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



learned to keep his temper in the hog lot he is likely to keep control of 

 himself in the city with all the city temptations. 



I think I hardly need to dwell upon the importance of these meetings. 

 I think one of the problems that is before the people of the United 

 States today, however, is very largely in your hands. We hear everywhere 

 the query, 'How are we going to counteract the present high cost of liv- 

 ing?' and I really believe that the situation is more largely in the hands 

 of the swine breeders and stock raisers and farmers in general than in 

 any other class perhaps. There are economies in every division of soci- 

 ety but the fact of the matter is that we have just got into the economic 

 stage where it takes more labor to produce the same amount on an acre 

 of ground than it used to do and where you have to begin to put more 

 work on and get less returns for the work. The only way you can get 

 the same old returns for the work is to mix in a large amount of brains 

 and the farmers and stock raisers of the United States have that problem 

 before them. You have to furnish the brains in a large measure for the 

 counteraction of this great economic movement which has set in in the 

 United States and it is only as you can learn to produce more pork for 

 the same money and more corn for the same money that you can counter- 

 act this great economic tendency and get things on a better basis. Our 

 American people have to learn something about economics but we have 

 to produce more for the same outlay and economize on the other end 

 in order to restore the normal condition of American life. 



And so I am especially glad to welcome men who have the means of im- 

 proving the live stock industry. 



I stand before you in rather a mixed role. I happen to be mayor of the 

 city of Des Moines by accident. My life has been in the role of school 

 master but I have been a stock raiser and I have never passed a happier 

 time in my life than in raising Poland China hogs. I cannot see how a 

 man can raise a hog and not fall in love with it. I often wonder how a 

 man can love a red hog but I remember that the parents of deformed 

 children love them best of all. 



I do not think I have anything of interest to say to you such as one 

 of the subjects on the program on how you can raise six cent pork on fifty 

 cent corn. That does not interest me half as much as raising five cent 

 pork on sixty cent corn and I think that is the problem we have to meet 

 and I think it can be done. I used to have just one principal rule as a 

 hog raiser and that was to start a pig to the pork barrel as soon as he was 

 born and then he was ready for the pork barrel as soon as was old enough 

 to go there. It is a great problem and it is only as the farmers and stock 

 raisers can mingle all the old hard-headed common sense with all the wis- 

 dom that the schools can give us that we can solve the problem. I was a 

 farm boy and supposed I knew how to raise hogs. I taught school for 

 fifteen or twenty years and then I went back to the farm and tried to 

 raise pigs and hogs and made a complete failure of something I supposed 

 I knew everything about. The fifteen years had made the difference. I 

 had never heard of black leg when I was a boy and the first thing I knew 

 it got my herd. But I had the advantage of a business education and 



