Missouri Draft Horse Breeders' Association. 539 



the world will give his interests and opinions, and also his 

 achievements. Legitimate advertising and pushing of your own 

 live stock is approved as an evidence of enterprise and a matter 

 of business, but begin directly to decry some other interest and 

 you weaken your position. I do not mean by this that any man 

 should stand for crooked competition or misrepresentation. 

 This, in common honesty, calls for attack not of the thing which 

 the other fellow has, but of the methods he employs. But we 

 have no fight against the automobile, the saddle horse or against 

 any other good live stock that fills a legitimate place in business 

 or pleasure. This is too big a world for friction to exist between 

 the good things which make it up. And (getting down to de- 

 tails) we who own Clydes or Shires have no quarrel with the 

 Percherons or the Suffolks. To ascribe to a breed the faults we 

 find among its less desirable individuals is either ignorance or 

 jealousy. In all breeds where business is active and competi- 

 tion keen the faults of conformation are apt to be disappearing 

 faults, for the effort of every live breeder is to cull them out and 

 to breed them out. Likewise, among the owners of draft stal- 

 lions standing for public service any rivalry which goes beyond 

 a good-natured competition to get the best class of mares and 

 (as a result) produce the most good colts is likely to react. The 

 biggest object to be achieved is to get the mare owner's co-oper- 

 ation (if you really have brought them stallions that warrant 

 it) and then work with them for more colts, better colts, better- 

 cared-for mares and colts, and finally, a class of horses in the 

 community that will bring the best buyers and make them com- 

 pete for what you have to sell. Many a community in the 

 United States has done this, and in those communities the best 

 farm profits in horses are made. 



Exhibitions and direct advertising through various uses of 

 printer's ink are so much associated that I shall talk of them 

 together, but not at much length. Either one is subject enough 

 in itself for a complete paper, but I believe that a discussion 

 from experience is the best way to bring out the facts in both. 

 Exhibiting animals is almost always a mixture of public service 

 and good advertising, so far as it is beneficial. Few men exhibit 

 primarily for the money they can win. Of such there is really 

 only one distinct class. To it belongs the fellow who waits to 

 learn the rings at his county fair in which there will be no com- 

 petition and then slips in with just enough animals to fill the 

 openings. Usually his animals have been so brought up that 



