Missouri Draft Horse Breeders' Association. 523 



you actually couldn't raise your umbrella on it. We have 

 fields that have produced a crop of corn every season for eighty 

 consecutive years with no appreciable decrease in soil fertility. 

 All the standard farm crops are produced, although the oat 

 crop is not generally sufficient to supply the local demand. 

 All our soils except the most stony hillsides will grow blue grass 

 abundantly. After years of experimenting we have learned 

 how to grow alfalfa in the Ozark hills, and there are hundreds 

 of acres of it there now^; some in my own county. Not all our 

 soils are adapted for it and the cultivated methods differ some 

 from those elsew^here, but it will grow all right when you know 

 how. 



Everywhere I go people take great pleasure in telling me 

 that the people in the Ozarks are far behind everybody else in 

 agriculture. This has been true to a degree, but it will not be 

 so very long. We have not had the advantages or opportunities, 

 enjoyed by others. It is about 75 miles across the country 

 from where I live to our State Fair. It is more than 200 miles 

 by the shortest railroad route, to say nothing of changes, waits 

 and poor connections. Is it any wonder that we do not all 

 turn out to the State Fair every year? The old-line native 

 Missourians are learning or disappearing. 



I meet people from all parts of the world who depend upon 

 signs for their success in breeding operations. As far as the 

 horse breeding industry is concerned, the education of a com- 

 munity depends upon the stallioners. If they are unpro- 

 gressive or conservative little can be done, and that has been 

 the trouble in the Ozark country. Stallion men would not 

 hesitate long to pay $1,000 for a jack, but would balk at half 

 that sum for any kind of an improved stallion. Importers 

 have tried to push their business into the Ozarks. They met 

 with little or no encouragement from the stallion men, and 

 so they moved their basis of operation to other and more profit- 

 able fields. George R. Crouch told me they sold 18 stallions 

 in one county in Missouri. I asked him how many he had 

 sold into the Ozark region. He replied that he did not have 

 the boundaries of the Ozarks definitely fixed in mind, but to 

 the best of his knowledge he had never sold any except to a 

 horse merchant in Springfield. 



At this present time, however, a great change is taking 

 place throughout that vast region. We are on the threshold 

 of an era of transformation of development and of readjustment. 



