No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 403 



Quote them as cheap as you can make them, because I have written 

 to several other breeders, and the one that makes me the best offer 

 will sell me the calf." Now, I have learned that it will not be well 

 to sell that man. He simpl}' does not want to pay for a good ani- 

 mal; he wants the commonest, most ordinary, little calf you have, 

 if you will let him hav^ it cheap. His letter indicates that he does 

 not care for breeding; that it does not matter how the animal w^as 

 bred, or where. Now, that is not so at all. It is like buying a 

 suit of clothes from a clothing house. If a man were to w^rite a 

 clothing house simply to send him a suit, without stating what kind 

 he wants, or what size, or how much he is willing to pay for it, 

 they would probably write him that they could supply him with a 

 suit all the way from ten dollars up to fifty dollars or more, but 

 they must have some more definite information. That way you 

 would probably get your money's worth, and it is just the same in 

 the livestock business. A man should know just what he wants, 

 and how much he is able to pay for it. I frequently write to such 

 a man and give him a range of prices, and then ask him to tell me 

 what he wants, and how much he is willing to pay for it, and I am 

 often able to lose a buyer of that kind in this way. 



Then there is another thing that is of great importance to the 

 man who wishes to attract buyers, and that is to take sample ani- 

 mals from his herd and exhibit them at the county or State fairs. 

 There he can reach from twenty to fifty thousand people in one 

 day — more than he would be able to interest in any other w^ay in a 

 year. It is one of the best advantages the livestock breeder can 

 have. People will soon see whether his stock is worth anything or 

 not. Here it is brought into competition with the same kind of 

 stock from all over the country, and a man will soon see that be 

 has by no means the best that can be bred along certain lines. If 

 he has any sense, he will take advantage of what he learns, and set 

 about further improving his stock. But at these fairs you will often 

 find men who come prepared to buy the leaders, and here is the 

 breeder's opportunity for establishing a reputation. Perhaps that 

 man comes from a neighborhood into which you have never sold any- 

 thing, and you are sending that sample into that neighborhood for 

 criticism. If what the breeder has said about that animal is true, 

 he will have gained an opening there, but if you have misrepre- 

 sented anything about that animal, it will come back very quickly, 

 and will frighten away other buyers, instead of attracting them. In 

 the livestock business it pays to tell tbe truth, the whole truth, and 

 nothing but the truth. The market you create for your animals 

 depends upon what you promise for those animals. If the animal 

 you sell into a new community comes up to its reputation, then your 

 market is established; if you have misrepresented it, the animal 

 will come back, but the buyer will not, nor any other buyer from that 

 community. Of course, you cannot guarantee how many years an 

 animal will live, or how many progeny it will have, or anything of 

 that kind. But you can guarantee that it is perfectly healthy at the 

 time you sell it,\and you can guarantee his conformity to the type 

 from which you have bred him, and you can guarantee his pedigree. 

 These things you can guarantee, and must guarantee if you are 

 going to succeed in the livestock business. 



