Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-10-15

Henry Bookneau Is Il crank. There
can be no doubt about this. The mem
bets of the board of supervisors of
Poweshiek county say he is crank.
The trustees Of Grinnell township say
! he is crank, and the trustees Oh
| Chester township, where Henry re-
sides. say the same thing. so 1T must
| be true. Every fellow has his own
idea of what makes u man crank,
and often 1T happens that man gets
the reputation of being crank be-
cause he is an enthusiast or because
his ideas on this or that thing are SO
startling, so different, from the IDEAS
of men generally; SO far in advance OF
well established convictions; so an
tagonistic to established customs, AMI
deep rooted prejudices, that he must be
a crank. is no other way to explain IT.
Nevertheless Henry Bookneau is II
remarkable man, and inside of ten
years the people OF Iowa are going to
find out that this crank has revolution
ICED road making and they will save
annually millions OF dollars.
/ have been asked to present this
mans ideas to the public, but befor-
doing it will say a word or two about
the man.
think it was In the year 1879 that
Henry Bookneau, very young man.
having accumulated several THOUSAND
dollars in farming, came to town to
live. He was wholly uneducated. UNI
couth, man Of iron constitution and
at that time he could and did do, on
farm, the work OF four ordinary men.
I knew the man when he was twenty.
At that time, after completing his iaar-
vest, he would help the neighbors.
have known him to follow reaper
for twenty-four hours at stretch,
binding wheat all right. and snatching
an hours sleep at a time.
He came to Grinnell to engage in the
mercantile business. For ten days he
was in bank. He soon realized that
he was a farmer, and not a banker,
and an unfortunate controversy sent
him back to the country, with only sl,-
500. He never married, he never spec
ulated. He now owns $50 acres Of land
worth $125 an acre, and 800 acres
worth sos an acre and has a comfort
able bank account On his farm he
has two barns I can not give dimen-
sions, but the two will house 900 tons
of hay, thousands of bushels of grain.
and three or four hundred steers, be-
sides horses and machinery
Into one of these barns, he can
drive at one time twelve wagons,
loaded with hay. with horses attached.
All his work is done under high
pressure, and the economy OF labor is
carried to its highest pitch.
The ground plan is arranged with
an eye to labor saving, the feed racks,
and the hay, space, the same, even his
pulleys are far in advance OF those in
ordinary use, and this man actually
made trip to New York city to study
the science of puleys and levers, and
there he had his immense pulleys man
ufactured, under his personal super
vision.
This man has been known 10 NOV,
rake and NOW away without help, nine
tons Of hay between day light and
dark. He has put in the NOW, alone,
and unaided, eighteen tons of hay in
one day.
At first this mans only ambition
was to get rich. Eaving got rich, he
cares nothing about it, His main farm
is the finest land on earth. Every foot
of it tiled, all tiled under his personal
supervision and most of it done by
himself. He knows more about thing
land than any living man. He lays his
tile in the middle Of the slough, and ne
never uses anything; smaller than five
inches and much OF it six and eight.
Several hundred acres of this land
have yielded no crop for three years.
1t is in meadow. The hay grows three
tons to the acre AMI then falls down.
He can't harvest 1T himself, and he
can't get help. Men won't work for
him. no matter why.
He won't let men harvest on shares
he won't rent the land, because he
won't stand the kind of farming that
the average man does. The land grows
richer, he says, and more valuable, and
he don't need the money.
am not trying to Justify this mans
methods. I am simply describing
them.
His hobby is thing. He talks thing
incessantly, in season and out of of
season. Having mastered the science
of thing land, he has now turned his
attention to thing roads, and on this
question the mans interest and en-
thusiasm are almost nlonomania.
The waste of labor, the waste of
material, is to him a crime. He holds
that Iowa roads should be made with
out lumber, without one foot. He
would make all roads with tile and
cement,
Now, is the man right or wrong?
1t is wholly useless to call him crank,
fool; the question is, is he right? II
he is, then the officials of Iowa are
guilty of waste that is absolutely
criminal.
Poweshiek county in the last i've
years has spent for bridges. lumber
and material, $4,000. Just think Of it!
Henry Bookneau says that every dol
lar of this expenditure is waste. Is
1t?
Prejudice is a hard thing to COM
bat and overcome. Nearly all men
are apt to do things as others have
been doing them. Bockneau has argued
for five years with supervisors and
trustees; he has abused them, de-
nounced them. He is not diplomat
he is exceedingly pugnacious and the
result is that. persons in authority have
turned deaf ear to his entreaties. He
came to me. full Of bitterness and in