No. 7. DEPARTMElNT OF AGRICULTURE. 375 



and fifty to two hundred and fifty doUars each, and we can't afford 

 to take them. The animals are worth it, but we simply can't afford 

 to pay the price. What then? We have our heads set on pure bred 

 stock, and we go down the line until we find something that fits our 

 pocketbook, and we say "these are pure bred?" And they answer 

 "Oh, 3'es." ''They are registered?" "O, yes." And we buy them, 

 and take home the man's culls. He wouldn't have sold them at 

 that price if they had not been culls. 



I repeat that these animals have been bred for the particular pur- 

 pose for which we want them. When we have made up our minds 

 we want a large supply of milk, and have plenty of feed, then 

 we take the Holstein; if butter, then we take the Channel Island 

 cattle; if better milk, and hilly pastures, then we take the Ayrshire, 

 and if meat, then we take the Hereford or Shorthorn. A good cow 

 is cheaper at sixty dollars than a poor one is at ten. I am going to 

 describe the requirements of a good cow a little later. With the 

 best grade of the particular type desired, we will get a bull of the 

 breed we want. Let me emphasize the importance of a good bull. 

 The importance of pure breed. I don't think we emphasize that 

 as we should. When we consider the breeding of animals, the 

 strain of the sire should be very carefully noted. Why, gentlemen, 

 what is a pure bred animal? It is simply one that has been bred 

 in a certain line so long that the type has become fixed. There is 

 always a tendency to go back to the characteristics of the ancestors, 

 and the better these characteristics and the longer they have been 

 bred, the nearer we get to the animals that we want, and the more 

 certain we are of producing the tendencies of that line. The more 

 we breed, indiscriminately, the more likely we are to go back to the 

 original tendencies. To illustrate this, let us take the human family, 

 and go right back to the Jew. Since the days when Abraham went 

 out from Ur of Chaldea and went whither he knew not, down through 

 the centuries, there has been the Jew, and to-day when for more than 

 two thousand years he has had no country, he is as separate and 

 distinct as he was four thousand years ago in Palestine. You can 

 pick him out to-day by his facial characteristics, and by the same 

 characteristics which Jacob exhibited when he entered into that 

 cattle deal with Laban, and in Joseph, when he got up that corner 

 in grain. Scan their names; you will find them foremost in finance, 

 in music, in trade and in politics. They are masters in whatever 

 they undertake. Why does the Jew succeed in spite of the persecu- 

 tion he has endured? Because he is smarter than the other fellow. 

 It is just this: The marriage of Jew with Jew, the breeding of the 

 racial characteristics, until we know to a certainty when we see a 

 Jewish family, that the child is going to be the same Jew that his 

 parents are. 



And this is the way our type of domestic animals is fixed. You 

 will buy a sire of the best breed. I believe it is more necessarj' 

 for me to have a good sire in my herd of grades, with his breeding 

 capacity proven, than it is for my neighbor, who is breeding pure 

 breeds entirely. He has a pure blood in his cows. You get a grade 

 Bire, the descendant of pure breed on one side, and of anything on 

 the other; you breed him with a good cow, and you say he will re- 

 produce the traits of his pure breeding; how do you know this? 



