238 BOARD OF AGKICULTURE. 



power that is within you to advance your own interests in that line in 

 the Avay of rtevelopinj; and improving the business. Tliere is a sterner 

 phase of the question and of affairs today tliat demand your most serious 

 attention. You have only begun to consider this subject, and you must 

 consider it seriously. You have got to fight tlie world, the flesh and the 

 devil along other lines than self-improvement, and the greatest need of 

 organization today, gentlemen, is to fight the enemy on the outside. I 

 have been connected with the Shorthorn Breeders' Association for a great 

 many years as director, etc., and in the last year I have been especially 

 connected with them representing the interests of that great association. 

 We have been meeting with the railroad men, with the ranchmen, pack- 

 ing house people, etc., trying to adjust strikes and everything of that 

 kind, and I have a very acute sense of the attitude which the live stock 

 interest takes toward the rest of the world. 



I want to talk about the necessity of good, serious organization not 

 only for education and improvement and development, but a fighting or- 

 ganization by which you can protect each other and your rights as people. 

 I would like very much to see a change in the title of your organization. 

 I believe it now is the Improved Live Stock Breeders' Association of the 

 State of Indiana. Why not Live Stock Breeders' Association of Indiana? 

 Isn't every man who feeds steers interested? Isn't every man that 

 ships his cattle to market interested? Isn't every man who has a 

 herd of grade cows or raises calves to sell, whether he feeds them 

 himself or not, interested? Isn't a man interested whether he feeds his 

 hogs or sheep on his farm or sells them to someone else to feed? What 

 is the situation in the live stock interesit? We have got to look at the 

 conditions of this great enterprise. It is a stable business. It should not 

 go along by fits and starts. Afe the little boy said, "God himself can not 

 make a two-year-old steer in a minute." It is a niatter of gradual produce. 

 The production is comparatively stable. There are two great factors. 

 These factors are the production and the ultimate consumption. It is 

 stable in every essential Avay, and yet while in the market there is noth- 

 ing so fluctuating as the price of live stock. It is up one week and the 

 next away down, bringing as a conseiiuence ruin and distress, as it is 

 bringing to thousands and thousands who are connected with it. It is 

 not alone between the consumer and the producer. First there stands 

 the transportation comi>anies who take it down to market; then the man- 

 ufMctui-cr is in tlu> way: tlien comes the retail dealer, and the retjul 

 marketer, and finally it is retailed to the stock yard companies wlio con- 

 stitute a step in this transfer from the producer to the consumer. We 

 also have the commission men. We can not do Avithout the transpor- 

 tation coniiKinies, of course, and we have no desire to do away with 

 them, and they cannot do without us. Every business in the world de- 

 pends upon agricultural prosperity. It would mean destruction to every- 

 thing in this world if this were taken out. The last two years have been 



