ii6 agriculture; of mainl;. 



So much for the feed and the environment. Now what about 

 the character of the goods you are going to produce? What 

 we want to do is to strive to produce the best possible article, 

 and to produce it in such a way that when we put our brand 

 on it and it goes to the market everyone is seeking to get that 

 brand, because it is A i. Every man can build up a reputation 

 that will be money in his pocket, if he will work on that prin- 

 ciple. I am a city farmer now; but all my life I have plowed 

 and milked. I have been in a city for the last five years. I 

 have a farm ; I have a dairy. But in my business in the city 

 now I am thrown not so much among farmers as among busi- 

 ness men, and the rank and file of those men in the city, when 

 you speak of a farmer, think of him as some fellow who is 

 going to put little apples into the middle of the barrel, or put 

 water into the milk, or something of that sort. There are more 

 crooked fellows in the city than in the country, there is no ques- 

 tion about that, and yet that is the opinion many business city 

 men seem to have of the farmer. What we want to do is to 

 produce goods of such a quality that they are praised wherever 

 they go. I am inclined to the opinion that a man can produce 

 milk in that way, with selected cows, fed from the crops he has 

 raised on his own farm, with a judicious marketing of the milk, 

 so that he can almost add 25 per cent to the net revenue he is 

 receiving at the present time. I would not be satisfied until 

 every cow in the dairy was making at least 7,000 pounds, and 

 until I had made that milk at a cost of 75 cents per hundred or 

 less. \\'hen you set up those standards and work for them, it 

 will not be long, if you have that determination you ought to 

 have, before you will succeed, and you will produce milk in that 

 way, because the situation is absolutely in your own hands. I 

 find some men who come to the dairy meetings and farmers' 

 institutes, and then they say, in regard to the speaker, "That 

 is all right for him ; undoubtedly he has a good bank account 

 back of him." But, friends, I do not think I have given you 

 any method that it is not possible for any man in this hall, what- 

 ever his circumstances may be, to go back to his home and set 

 in operation. It will not cosi him very much ; it is something 

 that appeals to everybody. I think that you men can work it 

 out along that line if you will. 



As I go through the different states, and as I meet the farmers 

 everyw^here engaged in the different lines of dairy work, fruit 



