188 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



mental education is of the utmost importance. I rode on the splen- 

 didly equipped milk train on the Lehigh Valley Railroad the other 

 day. On it were drawn to New York City nearly a quarter of a mil- 

 lion quarts of milk. The transportation company makes a profit 

 drawing that milk. Every handler and distributor of that milk 

 makes some profit, and the consumer gets it at a price that makes 

 it the cheapest food he can buy, while the man who produced the 

 milk by hard and continuous labor actually lost money on a third 

 to a half of that quarter million quarts speeding in that milk train 

 towards New York City. No wonder those farmers scold and use 

 harsh language and groan under the burden they are laboring, 

 though they do not realize that the remedy is in their own hands. 



I am thoroughly convinced that no line of work before the exten- 

 sion workers, State and national, and the agricultural press, rela- 

 tive to dairy improvement is of as much importance as that of en- 

 abling the farmers to eliminate the unprofitable cow and put the 

 herd on a business basis. Without this the farmer goes floundering 

 along improving this, remodeling that but he neglects the founda- 

 tion of his business and the entire structure is in constant danger 

 of collapse. 



The individual cow is the foundation unit of the dairy business: 

 The cow that will not pay for her keep cannot make us any profit. 

 This is so self-evident that a six-year-old will grasp it and yet 

 strange to say only one in fifty of us big folks do actually grasp it. 

 I know this is true because the other 49 continue to feed and keep 

 the cows that do not pay for their keep. How do I know this? Be- 

 cause when we applied the test in Pennsylvania or any other state it 

 was proven true. Not one test told any other story. My daily ob- 

 servations shows it to be true. The endless growls of the dairy 

 farmers indicate its truth. Here are some cold unpleasant facts. 

 Let us take our bitter medicine and be done with. Two and a half 

 years ago the farmers in New Hampshire organized a cow testing 

 association comprising 26 herds, or 326 cows. The conditions for 

 an economic production from these herds were a great deal better 

 than the average because the cows were above the average. Before 

 the first year was up 103 cows were sold. These were so impossible 

 that no further account is given of them. A few died or dropped 

 out and 203 cows completed the year's record. Of these 129 cows 

 made a profit of from .f4.95 to |58.12 each. The other 74 cows lost 

 their owners from .|4.14 to ^42.95 each. Starting with 326 superior 

 cows 120 of them proved profitable when a real business test was 

 applied. Who is to blame if dairying is unprofitable? You answer 

 that question please. 



There are two simple questions every business dairyman must an- 

 swer or he is no business dairyman. What does it cost to keep the 

 cow? How much income does the cow bring during the same twelve 

 months? A Chester county farmer told me it cost him only $18 to 

 find out that he was loosing |195 a year. Cheap education, isn't it? 



