FIFTY-SECOND -ANNUAL CONVENTION 97 



The things that have been unkindly said about us, 

 and it may be truthfully, I am happy to say to you that we 

 shall outgrow them, and we shall be victors. I come to 

 you to extend the invitation to come to my town. If you 

 do come down there, we are not going to overwork folks' 

 imagination. I heard Miss Coons make a talk to a gang of 

 bald-headed and white-headed men and she said, '*I want 

 you to imagine for a minute you are all children fourteen 

 years old. If you come down I will give you two hundred 

 rosy-cheeked Egyptian girls to talk to and you can have 

 this bald-headed gang of men thrown out. (Laughter.) 



I come to extend this invitation to you. I shall leave 

 my documents with your secreatry. I come in the name 

 of the Kiwanis, I come in the name of the Lions, I come 

 in the name of the Rotary Club — I think it is one of the 

 best in the State of Illinois — of my own city, and I have a 

 message from all three of them asking you to come down 

 and see us and we will do our best to make you happy. 



I have a letter from the four great coal groups that 

 represent twenty-five millions in money; they send you 

 greetings and an invitation to come down and see how our 

 folks make a living, and to see our twenty-five hundred 

 homes of happiness and contentment, and see our great 

 gang of boys, eight or nine hundred in a community high 

 school, who have been taught that all folks are equal so 

 long as they conduct themselves morally and otherwise as 

 they ought, and the teachers in that school have so worked 

 it out that I dare you to go there tomorrow and tell the 

 difference between the banker's daughter and the laborer's 

 daughter. 



I bring you greetings from the three great banks of 

 my city, representing total resources of more than six mil- 

 lion dollars. Bring your check books with you and they 

 will take care of you as far as that is concerned, down 

 there. 



I have a letter from the Farm Bureau. Many of you 

 are acquainted with the Farm Adviser. He sent a very 

 cordial greeting and said, *'Be certain that it gets into the 

 hands of the committee." The Harrisburg Dairy Products 



