34 



the situation, it opens the door for our surplus product, and prevents 

 congestion. If we throw away the key, our hog industry will dwindle 

 away to the position it occupied years ago, becoming practically limited 

 to supplying the local demand. Upon which side of the fence will our 

 farmers jump? Surely none of them wish to become impaled upon the 

 snout of a large-sized American fat hog. 



Another question which has been raised is whether it pays Canadian 

 farmers to feed hogs of any kind. Some writers have gone so far as 

 practically to advocate that farmers should drop out of the hog business 

 altogether. This position is so unreasonable and so childish as scarcely 

 to deserve notice. We find men who cannot make the raising of sugar 

 beets pay ; other men engage in the operation and make a fair profit. 

 We also find men who cannot make dairying pay, and others who find it 

 a very profitable business. The same may be said of almost any business 

 undertaking, whether connected with agriculture or not, and it would 

 be a strange thing if the feeding of hogs were any exception to the general 

 rule. While everyone will admit that it is possible to lose money on hogs, 

 at the same time it is possible to make money, as has been demonstrated 

 a great many times. Those who feel sure they are losing money in the 

 hog business had better stay out of it, but they should have the good 

 grace to give those men who are engaged in it credit for understanding 

 their business, and being their own judges as to whether they should stay 

 in it or not. 



But perhaps the most plaintive and most general wail comes from 

 those who believes that it costs a great deal more to produce the bacon 

 hog than to produce hogs of the fat type. This belief is extremely wide- 

 spread, and probably has a firm place in the minds of ninety-nine out of 

 one hundred farmers. When we come to sift the evidence, however, we 

 cannot find a particle of proof in favor of this theory. At both Guelph 

 and Ottawa it has been found impossible to demonstrate that there is any 

 fixed relation between the type of the pig and the cost of producing one 

 hundred pounds increase in weight. If a pig is thrifty, has a good con- 

 stitution and good digestive organs, it can make good use of its food, 

 whether it belongs to the bacon or to the fat type. In addition to the 

 work done at Guelph and at Ottawa, the Iowa Experiment Station con- 

 ducted three experiments with six different breeds of swine, and a com- 

 parison of their results with the results obtained at Guelph with the same 

 six breeds should convince any thoughtful person that breed has practi- 

 cally nothing to do with economical production. It is worthy of note 

 that one or two experiments amount to practically nothing so far as 

 establishing a certain point is concerned. In our own experiments, which 

 we are carrying on with cross-bred swine, we have two litters of pigs of 

 identically the same breeding, and yet one group is making very much 

 cheaper gains than the other. If these two groups had happened to 

 belong to different breeds, the person unfamiliar' with experimental work 

 would likely conclude that the difference was solely attributable to the 

 breed. Since they are of identically the same breeding, and since the 



