No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 155 



We trust that your meeting here will do us much good and that 

 we will derive great benefit from your coming. I was not aware 

 that this was to be a meeting of this character this afternoon, 

 but I think that your meetings later will develop papers that will 

 be very useful and instructive to us. 



The CHAIR: We have a gentleman here from way out near the 

 Ohio line that we are always delighted to have with us — Brother 

 Orr. We would like to hear from him now. 



MR. ORR: Mr. Chairman and Members of the State Board of Agri- 

 culture, and Ladies and Gentlemen: Our friend on the left here, 

 said to me, "Now you can get up and crow." That reminds me of a 

 little experience over in New Jersey some two or three years ago, 

 where an Ohio man was called upon and be was a dairyman, and J 

 a chicken man. There was a bee man there also, and he and I ha« 

 an argument on which was the more useful animal, the cow or tht 

 hen, and since then, whenever they get a shot at me, they are always 

 throwing it at me, "Now, old rooster, it is your time to get up and 

 crow," or, "Old hen, it is your time to rise up and cackle." My 

 time to crow and cackle is later on, upon this program. I am 

 very much surprised that the Chairman should call on me now to 

 say anything this afternoon. I came utterly unprepared and with- 

 out thought. 



My first experience in Pennsylvania was nineteen years ago this 

 summer, when I first came into the State and the very first place 

 I went to was to Chester county and I stopped at one of the hotels 

 at West Chester, and from this place, as a central point, I traveled 

 out over this great county of Chester studying its agricultural and 

 livestock interests and particularly its dairy interests. The things 

 I saw and learned then in Chester county impressed me so much and 

 so favorably that I have always regarded Chester county as the 

 county which stood ahead of all others in Pennsylvania as an agri- 

 cultural, live stock and dairy county. 



It was my pleasure to have as guides, two well informed gentlemen 

 who showed me what I saw in Chester county. They took a great 

 deal of pride and pleasure in pointing out to me the points of histori- 

 cal interests of which this county is so full. Notwithstanding the 

 years that have passed, that first impression still remains with me, 

 and I have always regarded Chester county as a good school to 

 which a young man might come. 



As I have crossed Chester county since and seen the changes 

 taking place in dairying lines particularly, I have been much im- 

 pressed. We do change; the world does improve, for nineteen years 

 ago the dairy methods were entirely different from what they are 

 now. Now you have in this city one of the largest, if not the largest, 



