FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 141 



the man who works for us what he can earn — you must pay him 

 according to the service he renders and you must teach him that 

 it is a question of the service that he can render and not the wage 

 that is going to detennine his future success or failure. In the 

 great factories in the city where I Hve, fifteen or sixteen years 

 ago a boy went from a farm into a factory in the winter. He 

 was a young man. He had been working a farm on shares, and 

 he went in there to crate carriages, that was done by piece work 

 and they had a fixed schedule of prices for doing that work. It 

 never occurred to him to slow down when he got up to the place 

 where he got the wage that his predecessor had gotten, but, on 

 the contrary, he figured that he could reduce the cost and earn a 

 higher wage. That man continued on there because he was try- 

 ing to see the service that he could render. He is now at the 

 head of the Nash Motor Company; the man that took the 

 General Motors stock when it was selling at 25 cents on the dol- 

 lar. At the end of eight years that same stock was worth $800 

 instead of 25 cents. All the time he was trying to see the ser- 

 vice that he could render and the last year in charge of the Gen- 

 eral Motors his salary was fixed at $100,000.00 a year, twice the 

 salary of the President of the United States. We have got to 

 teach the man who toils upon the farm for a wage that there is 

 a hope for him if he stays with us upon the farm and that he has 

 got an opportunity for a future and it is not going to be meas- 

 ured by $30 a month and board ; and I think it is up to the farm- 

 ers to appreciate another thing — that it takes more brains and 

 you have got to exercise more intelligence to successfully oper- 

 ate a farm than any other kind of industry; that you have got 

 to measure with Providence, weather and conditions, and that 

 you cannot operate it by machinery like the factories, nor can 

 you gauge the price like the merchant. 



I want to say to you, my friends, that are now feeling pret- 

 ty good over the increase in the value of your product, don't do 

 as they are inclined to do, say that you are entitled to more be- 

 cause it costs more to produce it. The fellow who drinks your 

 milk doesn't care what it costs you to produce it, what he is in- 

 terested in is what it is worth to him as a food and not to drink 

 simply as a beverage. You have got to be able to expatiate your 

 wares the same as other industries and you can get for your pro- 



