Live Stock Breeders* Association. ' 239 



hundred years ago. The attention of enterprising agriculturists 

 appears to have been directed to them about seventy years ago. 

 The prominent qualities which attracted the attention of breeders 

 were their quietness and docility, the easiness with which they 

 were managed, the few losses incurred from their injuring each 

 other, the disposing of a greater number of them in the same space, 

 their natural fitness for feeding, and the rapidity with which they 

 are fattened. A new ideal was formed, representing a maximum 

 of beef and a minimum of bone, prime in quality and with little 

 offal. 



Perhaps if I briefly relate my own experience it may give you 

 some idea why I prefer the Aberdeen-Angus. I was born and 

 raised on the farm, and being the youngest boy, it naturally fell 

 to my lot to herd the cattle and milk the cows while my elder 

 brothers and father did the farm work. We afterwards moved to 

 a small town to get better school privileges, but kept the farm. 



I attended school during the winter and herded the cattle in 

 summer, until I took a clerkship in a general merchandise store. 

 After doing this for a few years my father and I engaged in busi- 

 ness, at the same time feeding cattle on a nearby farm. We re- 

 mained in business over a quarter of a century in the same town, 

 and I still reside there. I relate all this to show that I had a 

 fondness for cattle, no matter if my mind was principally taken 

 up with the merchandise business. I sold it a little over a year 

 ago, and now have no other regular business but the breeding and 

 raising of Angus cattle. Some eight years ago I decided I wanted 

 some better cattle than the average grade; in other words, some 

 registered, purebred cattle. Living in the corn-belt, I thought I 

 wanted the beef type, but spent more than a year investigating 

 whether that type should be Hereford, Shorthorn or Angus. My 

 first inclination was to purchase the Hereford, as there were so 

 many in my county, Marshall, which I think has been styled the 

 Herefordshire of Anierica. This had its influence, as you know 

 we are always prone to follow the leaders, like the sheep that 

 finds a gap in the fence — through it goes — and the rest all follow. 



At about this time I was taking the Chicago Evening Post, 

 a general news and market paper, and in looking through the live 

 stock notes that were not set in large, bold type, but in even smaller 

 than the general reading type, I found these items: 



"Dec. 21, 1899. — There are three distinctly beef breeds in 

 which there is little choice. These are the Shorthorns, Herefords 

 and Aberdeen-Angus. The Angus cattle are apt to sell the high- 



