90 The Bulletin. 



do uot pay him, he cau always sell them to the butcher, and get out of the 

 business without any loss. I do not want you to think that I have anything 

 against the fruit business, for I have not; but it takes more capital than the 

 dairy business, because you must wait longer to realize on your investment 

 than you do with dairying. The dairyman feeds his good cov*' to-day, and 

 to-morrow she pays him back. If at any time she does not pay him, he cau 

 dispose of her. 



It is just the same with other branches of farming as with fruit raising; 

 they are more or less si>eculative — at least, more so than the dairy business. 

 It is so with the beef business, the sheep business, the hog business, and any 

 other form of live stock. If the market is low when you buy and high when 

 you sell, you make a nice lot of money ; but if it is the other way, you will be 

 apt to lose. With dairying there has not been a year, for the last twelve 

 years, even in the case of crop failures, when a man with reasonably good 

 cows has uot been able to go out on the open market and buy feed at market 

 prices, feed it to his cows, and still make a profit. Not so with the beef busi- 

 ness and these other systems of live-stock husbandry. The dairy cow is an 

 economical producer of human food. The same feed which it takes to make 

 a pound of dressed beef will if fed to a dairy cow make a pound of butter. 

 It is true, there is more work about the dairy business than about producing 

 beef; but it is a mighty poor dairyman who cannot afford to milk and care for 

 a cow for the difference in price between dressed beef and butter. 



The dairy business is a cash business, and that is the best kiud of a busi- 

 ness to engage in. You do uot have to wait until your crop is harvested and 

 put upon the market, and borrow money in the meantime. A dairyman with 

 a good herd of cows can have his business so arranged that he has money 

 coming in every month in the year, in the winter-time as well as in the summer. 

 Not only is it a cash business, but it brings the return uniformly throughout 

 the year, and the farmer will have cash to meet current expenses. 



Another thing which appeals strongly to me. and I am sure it will to you, 

 is the tendency which the dairy business has to solve the labor proposition. 

 There is everywhere a complaint of the lack of available labor on the farm. 

 I do uot know how you treat your labor in this State, but over in Michigan 

 the man who is engaged in fruit farming or general farming asks the laborer 

 to come and work for him during the summer months, during haying and 

 harvesting, fruit-picking, etc., and then turns him loose to shift for himself 

 in the winter. Of course, that laborer will drift to the city, and may not 

 come back on the farm again next year. The consequence is a lack of good 

 labor in the farming districts. 



Now, dairying will solve this difficulty, for there is just as much work in 

 the winter-time on a dairy farm as there is in the summer — in fact, a little 

 more, and the farmer can afford to hire his labor by the year. If you will 

 give a laboring man a house to live in, and a small plat of ground for a garden, 

 and employment by the year, you will find, as have dairymen in other parts of 

 the country, the dairy business has largely solved the labor problem. Of 

 course, you realize that as long as you employ labor you will have more or less 

 difficulty with labor; but, broadly speaking, the dairy business will solve the 

 problem. 



I take it that you have agreed with me in these arguments in favor of 

 dairying, but that you will say. "There is more work about dairying than there 

 is about any other system of live-stock husbandry." I know of a number of 

 farmers who object to dairying because there is too much trouble connected 

 with it ; and one man told me that he did not like to be tied to a cow's tail 

 365 days in the year. It is true that the work is confining ; but I believe this 

 feeling is principally due to the size of the herd kept ou the average farm. 

 It is not large enough. 



I inquired this morning about the average number of cows kept on a farm 

 in this State, and found that very few herds run over twenty, while the 

 average is about six, seven, or eight cows per farm. This is not enough. A 

 man with six cows is just as much confined as the man with twenty, and he 

 cannot afford to hire labor to care for six cows ; while if he had twenty, he 

 could afford to hire a good man to care for them, and so he himself would 

 not be so confined. He wastes a lot of time going to the back pasture for six 



