ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 285 



our history, the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson sent 

 Monroe to France with instructions to buy the mouth of 

 the Mississippi River. Monroe found the First Consul 

 a man of few words. Bonaparte offered the whole Louis- 

 iana Territory for $15,000,000. Fortunately, there was 

 no cable line in operation in those days and Monroe was 

 compelled, or rather permitted, to act on his own re- 

 sponsibility; and so it happened that the greatest real 

 estate deal in history was closed out and the Louisiana 

 Territory, with Iowa included, passed to the United 

 States of America at about five cents an acre. Louis- 

 iana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Ne- 

 braska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, and 

 Montana have been formed out of this territory. 



When Elizabeth ruled in Great Britain there were only 

 3,000,000 people in the world who understood the lan- 

 guage of Shakespeare. Today there are 2,225,000 in 

 Iowa alone. The future of our state depends upon our 

 soil, our climate, our people, and our laws. Iowa, like 

 France, is built upon the limestone which insures the 

 permanency of her fertility. At Oskaloosa we sank an 

 artesian well 2750 feet, and the last two thousand feet 

 were in limestone. 



France has had 2,300 crops in 2,300 years, and her agri- 

 cultural future still rests on the limestone of prehistoric 

 days. 



Education of the children has been the cardinal prin- 

 ciple of our faith from the beginning. We have $20,000,- 

 000 invested in school-houses, and spend nearly $9,000,000 

 a year in the support of our public school system. With 

 no city of any magnitude in our borders, we are happily 

 free from the political complications that embarrass those 

 states which are overshadowed by great cities. We have 

 only to be true to ourselves to keep our state in its pres- 

 ent happy condition. 



