Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1910 — Meals of Enlightenment. [ARTICLE]

Meals of Enlightenment.

The Middle West Is using luncheons and dinners as a means to booming and boosting their towns, and devising fresh methods of accelerating progress, says Collier’s. Des Moines was sleeping the sleep of lethargy and hopelessness three and a half years ago, when a few of her busiest business men began to get together at noon luncheons once, twice and three times a week, and talk up a thriving town. They willed that Des Moines Should awake. Out of their inspirational {easts grew the Greater Des Moines committee. The Commercial Club breathed in new life. The Des Moines plan of commission and referendum government enabled the citizens to clean up the mess at the city hall. The life force of those banquetlngs expressed Itself in various directions. To-day Des Moines has more vitality and higher momentum than It had three years ago. The luncheon and dinner habit Is still maintained as the source and fount of much of the good. You go to a luncheon of a hundred or so persons in Des Moines —business men, lawyers, journalist* and agrlcUltural editors —and they talkwikUie yon eat. While the courses are being munched thoughts on city charters, corp-growlng and factory tadaceinept ere casually spilled out by loeU talent.