HARVEST FESTIVAL ADDRESS ! 



All of the people of the Old World look back to the 

 origin of their race in the mists and marvels of great an- 

 tiquity. Gods and goddesses were concerned in their be- 

 ginning and the supernatural was freely appealed to. 



But here in Iowa we have a great commonwealth whose 

 beginnings are in the memory of living men and women 

 who are still young enough to remember well. 



An audience like that which faces me today shows that 

 Iowa is certainly not decreasing in population, the evi- 

 dence of the census taken to the contrary notwithstand- 

 ing. But if we have lost some in numbers merely, the 

 quality has not deteriorated. 



Iowa in 1860 had only 764,913 people but in 1861 she 

 began to send them to the war and more than 80,000 of 

 her sons bore arms to the nation's defense. 



We should be more concerned in the character of our 

 citizenship than in any question of mere numbers. There 

 were 20,000 Athenian citizens capable of bearing arms in 

 the days of Miltiades and to them we owe the victory of 

 Marathon which saved the Greek citizenship which has 

 molded the history of Europe and America, and the influ- 

 ence of their courage and intelligence still bears fruit 

 after twenty-three hundred years. 



There were still 20,000 Athenians capable of bearing 

 arms in the days of Demetrius Phalereus. But they were 

 the degenerate sons of noble sires. 



i Delivered at the Iowa State College, Ames, September 29, 1905, ante- 

 dating his death, as Mrs. Bernice Lacey Sawyer writes, by eight years, 

 almost to the hour. He spoke for an hour entirely from notes which, with 

 the following extracts, were kept with the program, thus bearing testimony 

 to the methodic habits of Major Laeey. 



