Annual Meeting 1067 



horse, nor to its deterioration iu value. Why? It is because we 

 have been breeding those horses on our own farms ; we have been 

 working them from three years old until six or seven years old, 

 and at the end of the game we can sell a horse for more than it 

 originally cost us. The city buyer wants that horse, that is, at 

 least six years old, and he will pay you just as much for it if it is 

 eight years old ; and the farmer controls the horse, works him for 

 five years, and then sells him for the (naximimi value, because he 

 can easily be sold if a horse of the right type. 



What do we find on the New York fami? We find that the 

 farmers are not growing their horses; they are buying them 

 largely from the West. They are also keeping a quality of horse 

 that is very inferior, a horse that is not calculated for farm work 

 in any sense of the word; and they nTd keeping a horse that is 

 hardly worth more than his hide. This accounts for the large 

 expenditure. I believe that the horse; i of JSTew York are not at 

 all adapted for the use to which you put them. Just a few days 

 ago I was riding in a bus from the hotel to a little village a 

 couple of miles distant, and the bub-driver — it was a very bad 

 day — said : " How fortunate it was I used my large horse, if I 

 had used my small horse he could not do the work." What was it 

 he called a " large " horse ? A horse that did not weigh a pound 

 over 1,050 pounds ! And if I talk with your farmers through 

 your state, what do I find ? I find that the horse they are using 

 on the farm is a horse entirely unadapted for this work, a horse of 

 mongrel breeding and largely of trotting blood. !Now a horse of 

 this description, is not calculated to do the work upon the farm. 



Your farmers and dairymen will tell you this : If you are going 

 to produce either milk or cream at a profit, you must have a 

 special animal. If you are going to do draft v;ork economically 

 you must have a horse adapted for that worl,, or serious results 

 will follow. If the horse is too small to do tht3i work the man is 

 liable to only half do the job. The average farmer does not plow 

 more than three inches deep; one reason is, the horse is so small 

 he cannot pull the plow. I find this to be true, that while your 

 soils are more stubborn than those of Mir^iesota, less is actually 

 accomplished and you are doing more wovk in the way of cultiva- 

 tion. Now one reason for this is that you do not use on the farm 

 those horses that are well adapted for your work. 



