Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 



421 



will leave you to imagine just how near and how dear you are to 

 me, especially the young lad who this noon termed me the "John 

 Hook of Kentucky." I failed to thank him then, but do now with 

 all the sincerity of my soul. Not only do I thank him, but all of 

 you for enduring this punishment so patiently and so bravely, and 

 when I look into your open, honest faces and receive your sincere, 

 hearty grip, I can but feel that I am in the land and with the 

 people of the "blessed," and from this night on I shall remember 

 you not as of Columbia, Mo., but Missouri, Columbia. I thank you. 



THE HORSE BUSINESS. 



(Francis M. Ware, Brookline, Mass.) 



Most of those assembled here contemplate breeding; have 



bred, or at least are interested in fine 

 horses, and the future of that animal for 

 labor and for pleasure, in war as in peace. 

 In all your minds there lurks, however, a 

 general doubt as to his future — not so much 

 the immediate future of 1913, but the period 

 of 1918 — '20-'25 — when, should you embark 

 in any such undertaking, the fruits of your 

 efforts would be just reaching marketable 

 age. That horses will ever become extinct 

 is as impossible as any fact can be; that 

 their usage will be much further restricted 

 is improbable ; that the scope of their useful- 

 ness will greatly expand is most doubtful — 

 and these facts, while narrowing the field of the animal's useful- 

 ness in the former universal, broad-gauge fashion, simplifies the 

 whole matter of breeding; reduces the temptation to experiment 

 with varieties and grades of different varieties; concentrates the 

 attention of the public upon certain definite types and families; 

 puts the final premium upon excellence and deals the finishing blow 

 to mediocrity. 



We Americans are, as a race, not well suited to succeed in pro- 

 ducing the highest types of any animal. We are too impatient, too 

 vacillating, too easily satisfied. We lack almost wholly the steady, 

 calm, discriminating, persistently-stubborn effort which forms such 

 a large element in the character of any successful breeder, or in 



Francis M. Ware. 



