FUNDAMENTALS IN DAIRYING 



Edwaed van Alstyne, Kinderhook, N. Y. 

 Director of Farmers' Institutes 



(The following address was given at the annual dinner of the Wyoming 

 County Cow-Testing Association, Warsaw, January 7, 1916.) 



In order to have correct ideas on any subject, we must know 

 the underlying facts, and from them reason logically. In order 

 to do this we must dismiss from our minds all prejudice and 

 previously formed opinions, accepting facts as they are, not as 

 we had thought they were, nor as w^e should like to have them. 



When I was up in Maine a few years ago, an old man living in 

 the back country was asked, " What do you do in winter when the 

 snow shuts you in ? " He replied, " Sometimes we set and think, 

 and sometimes we just set." While the latter certainly does not 

 tend to mental development, I believe in the end it is better than 

 to think crookedly. One of the great needs of the present day is 

 for men to think straight, namely, first to get bottom facts, and 

 then to draw logical conclusions from them. 



My purpose today is to set in order before you some facts, 

 easily to be apprehended by any unbiased mind. If we agree 

 as to these we should be able to arrive at the same conclusions, 

 even though they are at variance with what may have been our 

 previous ideas. To " set and think " that we are the victims of 

 the monopoly working against hea\y handicaps, ignoring actual 

 facts, will not only do us harm, but will take away a desire for 

 the individual effort alwavs fundamental for success. 



Were we to take at face value all the statements in the agri- 

 cultural press and from the lips of those with good intent, but 

 whose mental processes stop too soon, we should be constrained to 

 believe that most dairymen were on the road to bankruptcy. How 

 can it be otherwise when apparently expenses far exceed receipts ? 

 These are not willful misstatements, but half-true statements, 

 more harmful than downright lies. We know that it is rare for 

 a dairyman to be sold out. In most cases they are paying for 

 and improving their farms, educating their children, and bring- 

 ing into their lives at least a degree of present-day necessities. In 



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