146 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Doran and the rest of you thirty-eight per cent. I remember 

 George Horner when he was buying hides up at our town about 

 twenty years ago on a salary of $75 a month. He went up to 

 Austin, and he and another man started in the packing business 

 with a capital of $1,200. The city gave them an old creamery, 

 and they started up killing hogs, established a city market, and 

 today Mr. Horner has a plant at Austin worth half a million dol- 

 lars, that he has made there in the last twenty years. I know that 

 all of the independent packing houses have been prospering ; and I 

 know that today, through the efforts of this organization, they 

 will prosper, because this organization has made it impossible for 

 the other fellows and the railroads to discriminate against them. 

 It has made it possible for them to get favorable rates inside the 

 state, and if they are not favorable enough, we propose to see that 

 they are made so. For that reason, I can't understand why any- 

 body should hesitate to interest himself in preparing the products 

 of his farm so as to be able to hand them over to the consumer. 

 Why, gentlemen, the people in the state don't want your hogs 

 and cattle; they can't eat them. They can eat your potatoes and 

 your butter, but they can 't eat your steers and your hogs ; they 

 want meat. Simply to go through the process of killing and pre- 

 paring the meats, you send them to Chicago and pay freight on 

 them and ship them back here ; and I tell you candidly that I have 

 eaten better bacon and better ham at the farm houses in this state, 

 prepared in the old-fashioned way and smoked in the little smoke- 

 house, than Swift or Armour ever put up in the world. The next 

 thing you will be doing is to send your cows to Chicago to have 

 them milked. 



I have talked about this project of organizing a packing plant 

 for the stock, but couldn 't get anybody interested in it ; and so 

 I concluded that I would go at it myself ; and after I found a man, 

 with whom I was well acquainted, who had had twenty-two years 

 of experience in the business, and I knew that I was right, we 

 tried it. We started to build, and had the misfortune of being 

 burned out about the time we were ready to start. We rebuilt 

 again, and met the same fate. This time we are building a plant 

 that wouldn't burn if it was located in Hades. A great many of 

 the farmers and stockmen up in our country have stock with us. 

 We have a standing invitation for all of you to come in on the 

 ground floor. There are no favorites, and you will get the same 

 kind of stock that I have and that everybody else has; and then 



