316 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



can't turn them out into the fields and the storm, and they are no 

 good because they can't stand the climate and all such things as that. 



If you have a real good watch, can you throw that watch around 

 as carelessly as you would a two dollar or two dollar and a half 

 watch that you buy? Can you take anything of value and throw 

 it around in that way without care? 



The very fact that the dairy cow is subject to all the changes 

 of temperature, and changes of diet shows how valuable the cow is. 

 It just shows what a treasure you have got, and that if you will just 

 put her in a suitable place and keep her under circumstances suited 

 to her health, that she will work for you; a thoroughbred can al- 

 ways do her work. It seems to me that she is very much like my- 

 self, it would take an immense amount of comfort to kill me; the 

 more we realize these things, the better we shall succeed in the busi- 

 ness. The truth is, a cow that is a cow is built for the purposes of 

 making milk and butter and when she has fulfilled that purpose, 

 I do not care whether she is in the Herd Book; I do not care whether 

 she has come from the Island of Jersey or whether she came from 

 the Netherlands, or where she came from. 



Yesterday it was my pleasure — I got permission to be absent from 

 this convention — to go to Cooper'§ sale to see a hundred head of 

 thoroughbred Jerseys sold under the hammer at auction. It 

 looked like a foolish thing, but I did it. Why, I couldn't 

 afford to miss that sale. I have been going to Coo]>er's 

 sales since 1882 and I have never missed one. There is no object 

 lesson in this world better than that, and I have never read a book 

 or come in contact with an animal that has taught me half as much 

 about cattle or the dairy animals as I have learned at Cooper's sales, 

 where I have seen the finest bred animals in the world for butter 

 and milk, stand there under the auction hammer, and knocked down 

 to the highest bidder all over these states. There was a sale yester- 

 day and it is a pleasure for me to tell 3'ou about it. One of the 

 finest animals that you ever saw was put up there; her body was just 

 the ideal body that is described by every man who lectures on the 

 dairy cow. She had all the points that a breeder would admire, 

 and when she was knocked down under the hammer, |2,500 was 

 paid for that beautiful Jersey cow. No man would go and pay that 

 for an animal if there was not quality there, if he did not know that 

 he was buying an ideal animal. Another one was knocked off at 

 $1,700. Just to see what breeding has done, I have followed these 

 sales for years and always with profit. Now what was the 

 reason of this? Why it was the prepotency of these animals. No 

 wonder they paid such prices. Somebody said they were fools and 

 all such talk as that. You know talk is wonderfully cheap until 

 you go and ask a lawyer something, and then you pay for it. Those 

 are the cattle that win at the fairs every time. You go to St. Louis 

 or any other fair and it is the thoroughbred animal that wins the 

 prizes. If any of you are foolish enough to talk against thorough- 

 breds, you belong in the class with the old lady at the market who 

 used the same tin cup to measure out apple butter that she did smear 

 kase, and after a while you couldn't tell the other from which. You 

 buy all sorts of stuff and in all sorts of ways. 



But I want to go back a little to speak further of what was done 

 at Cooper's sale yesterday. They had there some heifers sired by 



