Live Stock Breeders' Association. 213 



A WORD TO THE NEW BREEDER. 



(Hayes Walker, Kansas Oity, Mo.) 



Your program committee asked for a paper on the data of 

 pure bred live stock, filled with figures and statistics, but it would 

 be a very dry subject, and worth nothing unless one could remem- 

 ber all the figures — a task both tiring and almost impossible. In 

 considering such a subject and the figures pertaining to it, apart 

 from other and parallel facts in contemporaneous industries, the 

 breeder of pure bred stock or the beginner is very apt to be fright- 

 ened by the apparently "bearish" figures at hand. 



The most recent estimates obtainable of the number of pure 

 bred cattle recorded that are now living are 260,000 Shorthorns, 

 120,000 Herefords, 62,000 Aberdeen Angus and 16,000 Galloways. 



The young man who contemxplates going into the pure bred 

 stock business argues to himself that with so many registered 

 cattle now living and the present magnitude of the industry the 

 business cannot continue, that it is not on a stable foundation and 

 that it is liable to be overdone. 



The figures given look big. They are, and they are growing 

 larger each year. Yet this, so the alder ones tell me, was the same 

 argument against the pure bred business twenty and forty years 

 ago. Yet it continues to thrive, with the demand and values on 

 about the same plane. In England where they have been breeding 

 pure bred stock for many, many years, more than in this country, 

 their values now are higher than ever. 



We hear the prophecy every day from men of affairs, from 

 people who study conditions, that the growth of this country has 

 barely commenced, and that in fifty years or less our population and 

 resources will be doubled. If this be true, and few doubt it, this 

 "bearish" argument of our doubtful friends has no place now, and 

 will not have, at least, until we have reached our largest growth. 



In my own brief experience as a fieldman on live stock papers 

 and in the larger experience of others with which I am familiar, I 

 never have known of any failure of breeder of pure bred live 

 stock through any weakness or fault of the business. There have 

 been failures, and many of them, but the cause can be traced in- 

 variably to some gross mismanagement or poor business judg- 

 ment of the breeder, aside from any fault of the pure bred. 



We will suppose, however, that our friend has overcome all 



