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Builders of a New Empire

Condensed from Success Magazine (April '26)
Lloyd Legler Evans

NE of the principal industries in Minnesota is the fattening of live stock for market. And in that State today, the most envied children are 16 juvenile farmers who, because of their proficiency in the art of feeding live stock, were the guests last fall of the Great Northern railroad on a six-day tour of Minnesota and North Dakota in a special "de luxe" train. Each of these youthful farm. ers was accompanied by his or her prize-winning head of fat live stock.

Ten years ago, far-sighted business, men and educators of Minnesota organized an annual Junior Live Stock show at South St. Paul-a live stock exposition in which exhibits may be entered only by the farmers of tomorrow, the farm boys and girls of today. The project was an immediate success and last November, at the most successful show in ten years, more than 500 Minnesota boys and girls exhibited live stock. Since only exhibitors who won prizes at their county fairs may show at the Junior Live Stock show, these more than 500 animals were the very best picked from the finest in the State.

When the judging was concluded, the entries were placed on the auction block and St. Paul and Minneapolis business men purchased the prize animals at unheard of prices. The champion steer was sold at 80 3 cents a pound for a total of $777. Another steer, exhibited by a 14-year-old girl, was sold for $859, or 71 cents a pound. The champion hog brought its youthful owner $438 for his summer's work. When the auction was concluded, virtually every large business house in St. Paul had purchased one or more of the entries.

Then Louis W. Hill, chairman of the board of the Great Northern railroad, and son of James J. Hill, "The Empire Builder," had an idea. "These prize-winning children," he said, "are heroes and heroines in the eyes of all the other farm children in the State. Why not send them out with their prize animals to show other children what they can do and to tell them how to do it "

The plan was enthusiastically indorsed. Four days later, every one of the 16 children left St. Paul on a special train which included a sleeping car, a diner, and a palace horse car for the animal nobility. And what a time they had! Many of the young farmers had never slept in a sleeping car or eaten in a dining car. From every indication, they were the happiest 16 young farmers in the United States.

The six-day itinerary of the tour included 21 cities and towns in Minnesota and North Dakota and at every one of these stops the special train received as warm a reception as the spectacle operated by Messrs. Ringling. In every community visited, schools were dismissed so that every child for miles around might attend the show and from the size of the crowd that greeted those barnstorming agriculturists in every town one judged that every child for miles around took advantage of the opportunity.

Brass bands turned out in full regalia. Local talent participated in entertainment programs. The traveling farmerettes did their share by pointing out the fine points of their exhibits and explaining in detail how valuable beef, pork or mutton may be grown. They advised their young auditors to "come on in." And the ad

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miring auditors replied in chorus, "We'll be with you next year."

Viewed from any angle, the first annual tour of the Junior Live Stock snow exhibitors was a complete success and a similar demonstration tour, Mr. Hili has announced, will be conducted by the Great Northern railroad as a grand finale to every Junior Live Stock show of the future.

The tour, however, was simply one of many lines of endeavor to make the boys and girls of today better men and women, better farmers and farmers' wives, in the future. In December of each year a National Boys' and Girls' Farm Club Congress 19 held in Chicago in connection with the International Live Stock Exposition. Last December, President Coolidge sent a message to the 1600 boys and girls assembled, representing clubs with a total membership of over 700,000.

Minnesota was one of the first northern States to organize for this work and the Minnesota clubs now have an enrollment of 23,000 boys and girls. T. A. Erickson, Minnesota State club leader, explained, "Each club has a regular plan of organization, officers, plan of work, meetings, with each member carrying a definite home or farm enterprise and endeavoring to use the better methods of agriculture and home economics in developing his or her project. Each club has an adult leader or adviser who works with a local committee. The committee is a part of the county extension service, working directly with the State Extension Service of the College of Agriculture, which in turn cooperates with the U. S. Department of Agriculture in promoting this work as a very important part of the educational program for better agriculture and more happy, prosperous homes.

"We have ten fundamental projects which our club members use as their club projects. In live stock, each member raises a baby beef or a dairy calf, or some lambs, pigs or poultry. In the crop line, each one grows from one to five acres of corn or one to eight acres of potatoes or a good sized

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home garden or an alfalfa plot. the home work the girls learn how to bake, sew and can.

"It is interesting to note that almost as many girls join the stock clubs and feed calves, lambs or hogs as join the home economics clubs. This means that in the future many farmers' wives will be real partners in the business, able to discuss intelligently farm problems.

"Each member keeps careful records of all operations, including cost of feed, labor and profits. These records are very important in presenting results to the community.

"The state program for Minnesota includes: 1-Club short courses at the Agricultural colleges at St. Paul, Crookston and Morris; 2-Club Dopartment with exhibits at the State Fair which gives 1100 county club winners free trips to the Fair; 3-The Junior Live Stock show; 4-Club department in connection with the annual meeting of the state horticultural society when county and district winners in the garden, potato and canning clubs come to St. Paul as the guests of the society; 5-Interstate club meeting at Sioux City Ia., when winning teams from 12 states compete; 6-National Dairy Exposition at which, in 1924, Minnesota had 47 dairy club members out of 200 club winners representing 25 states.

"Last year, we had 2100 dairy calf club members, each with a high grade or pure bred dairy heifer. Many of these were on farms where it was the only good animal. For countless generations, agricultural training has been too much on the order of ‘Ask Dad-he knows.' And too often, Dad didn't know. The result, in many cases, was that Son farmed exactly as his great-great grandfather or left the farm. Times changed but farming didn't."

Some epigrammatist has observed that the boy is father to the man. And it is on that unquestionably true premise that club leaders are working out the salvation of agriculture in America.

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America's Place in the World

Condensed from The Century Magazine (April '26)

H. V. Kaltenborn

TO European thinks of the United States as isolated from the rest of the world. To him it is the place where thousands of his countrymen have sought and found comfort and happiness. Whoever wanders abroad soon realizes the manifold ties that bind the Old World to the New America. Everywhere peoples and governments are anxious to please us. The American is transfigured and glorified by the strength and reputation of the country from which he comes.

Let no one suppose that this is because the world likes us. There is scarcely no feeling that we have ever made an unselfish contribution to Europe. America is too powerful to be liked abroad.

discredit upon their country are Seymour Parker Gilbert and Jeremiah Smith. They have not made them. On the contrary they have shown the same skill, tact, and patience in the administration of a task involving delicate international relationships as that which added so much to the reputation of the British people in the last century.

man. Every one likes

Switzerland because no one fears it. But no one knows what America may or may not do. The United States has already purchased or conquered an area larger than the whole of Europe, and no one feels certain just what the next turn in our ambition may bring. The astute European statesman sees us as children playing with the new-won toy of World Power, hardly realizing its value, uncertain whether we wish to break it, throw it aside, or try to do something with it. He would love to have us use it in a way that would be to his advantage, but he does not quite know the best way to bamboozle us. He is always sure, however, that a good dose of flattery can do no harm, and he invariably tries that first.

But whatever else Europeans may say about us, they cannot and do not deny our skill as bankers and executives. The two Americans who now have the greatest opportunity to make mistakes that would reflect

Young Mr. Gilbert showed his capacity in the Treasury Department during the war, and was suddenly thrust into the most important administrative job in Europe. Overnight he became Reparations Czar, supervising the most delicate and complicated mass of financial machinery ever devised by the mind of The Dawes Plan is well launched upon its second year without a hitch, without a serious dispute of any kind. It is an American plan financed largely with American money and administered with American brains. Europe may not like us any better for having put it through, but Europe certainly has a high respect for the way it was thought out and is now being worked out.

There is another American ambassador of business sense and good will in Hungary. Jeremiah Smith of Boston is doing the same sort of League of Nations job in Budapest that the Dutch Burgomaster Zimmerman has been doing in Vienna. He has to see that the government of

Hungary is run efficiently and economically. And he has been so careful not to abuse his authority, to suggest rather than to command, that he has won universal esteem in the Hungarian capital.

For five years scarce a month has passed in which America has not

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been a mighty power in some great international conference.

Wherever I went last summer, in Europe and the Near East, I found American echoes. Everywhere individual Americans, American influence, American machinery, American charity were working constructively in the rebuilding of the world. In Italy, when liberty-loving Italians who fretted under the tyranny of Fascist rule were told by Mussolini's envoys that democracy and efficiency could not exist together, they inquired: "What of America?"

In Athens American relief agencies cooperating with the League of Nations looked back upon one of the finest achievements of organized charity in all history. Hundreds of thousands of refugees had been established in camps, cared for, transplanted to new homes, given work, and placed on the road toward independence.

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In Palestine the intelligent use of few millions, contributed by American Jews, is transforming a desert into a fertile agricultural area. Of all the movements which Americans are sponsoring in foreign lands none has a more practical and at the same time a more appealing aspect than the transformation of the arid hills of Judea into flourishing agricultural settlements by those who look upon bleak Palestine as the promised land.

In Cairo the Egyptian minister of agriculture had just had word that the United States Department of Agriculture would lend him two experts to supervise a vigorous campaign against the boll-weevil. Egypt's young government appreciates the unselfish willingness of the United States to lend its experts to help Egypt compete more effectively with the cotton farmers of our own South. And yet the agricultural minister's greatest enthusiasm was reserved for the Ford tractor. He sees Egypt's fields enriched, her agricultural methods revolutionized by trac

tors sold at a price even Egypt can pay.

And in Spain I found King Alfonso XIII a great admirer of still another phase of American life. He is an enthusiast about American sportsmen and American sportsmanship. A few days later I talked with Edouard Herriot, ex-premier of France, and he was full of reminiscences about his visit to America, the profound impression created by its lusty young strength and its eager aspiration for a better world. "We must work together," he said, "for peace, France and America."

In England there is a new note of admiration for America's industrial and financial power in world markets and for her political contributions to recent World War settlements. The fact that Great Britain now recognizes her wayward child of the New World as an equal in world power and world councils is a compliment that we have thus far appreciated more in promise than in performance. Ours is an opportunity, but much remains to be done if we are to realize it.

Fundamentally there is a marked similarity in the democratic traditions and political ideals of the English-speaking peoples. This possibility of joint power should be used for the world's good.

Americans who wander abroad with seeing eyes realize the amazing growth of our foreign interests. Politically, financially, industrially, we have become integrated with the Old World to an extent which few of us appreciate. America's power and America's opportunity are worldwide. Isolation or insulation from foreign entanglements is alike impossible or inadvisable. We cannot turn back. We must go forward facing our destiny. We have already won material power. We must achieve spiritual leadership. We can do it by responding graciously to those generous instincts and tions which are the most precious part of our American heritage.

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The "Main Street" Banker

Condensed from Scribner's Magazine (April '26)
Will Rose

ECENTLY a friend of mine was telling me of his visit to a Pennsylvania town of 1500 where he I had first started in business. While there he had renewed his acquaintance with John Lavery, the president of the local bank. My friend had this

to say:

"For years that banker has been de originating ideas and theories on the possibilities of the country bank. For example, I started my first business venture in that town. Lavery used to talk to me at great length about my little retail store and the way I was handling it. To make a long story short, he loaned me the limit at the bank, and made it possible for me to press on with the development of the opportunities I saw at every hand. With Lavery's help, within seven years I trebled the size of my retail business, developed a fine little manufacturing business, and helped to organize, bring to the town, and direct three other small, growing factories. While Lavery was doing this with me, he was working in similar ways with some others. Why, he tells me that only recently he went to the owner of the old hotel and showed him that there wasn't a modern, comfortable hotel in a radius of 30 miles. He got him to agree to the organization of a new, modern hotel. The new

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hotel account is four times as large as was the old one and the town is immensely benefited. Traveling men are riding 25 miles out of their way to stop there, especially over week ends. The conclusion to the story is that he showed me a statement of the bank that totalled resources of more than $2,000,000. Think of that alongside of the $10,000 Farmers' Bank he started 30 years ago. The town has grown since, of course-it couldn't help it with a man like Lavery whipping it

constantly-but only normally. What I mean is that it is located in the East where old communities are not doubling in size every ten years as some baby towns are in the West. Think of it. What an answer that is to the 'Main Street' cynic who seems to be very popular at present!

"If the country bank generally throughout the country," continued my friend, "can rise to meet the opportunities before it, life in the small town can be made much more delightful than in the cities and at the same time much more profitable in money terms and much more secure. It is to the small town that we must look for a return to the American dollar that will buy 100 cents' worth of food and clothing and recreation. I refer to building the community-thousands of them-rather than the few great centers. It can easily be the solution of farm credits, distribution of manufacturing and population, congestion of cities, development of natural resources, perfection of railroads, roads, and truck-lines, and-solution of the labor problem!"

Until recently, the well-to-do men of the small town naturally gravitated to the bank directorates. Too often these men were well-to-do by inheritance only or by very gradual accumulation through painful personal economy. They were not progressive in any sense. That explains why the bank has been one of the very last lines of business to use the power of advertising for service, greater growth, profits.

Then came the new idea. Younger men, without regard to their personal worth at the moment, but with proved ability, were made directors because of what they knew about constructive business, finance and advertising. Ser

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