322 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



the country newspapers of Missouri are conducted by men who 

 could make a great deal more money with a great deal less 

 labor if they were engaged in other work. I know of my own 

 knowledge that the editor of a country newspaper in Missouri 

 — an ordinary county-seat weekly at that — had an opportunity 

 less than a month ago to go into work in St. Louis which 

 possibly would have made him rich in a few years, and that he put 

 it aside because he wanted to stay in the town in which he is living 

 and continue the work which he is doing. I have no doubt the 

 same thing has happened in the experience of many of the better- 

 class newspaper editors of Missouri. I have told you this that you 

 may know that the modern country newspaper editor is not an 

 Ishmael, and that I might lay the foundation for the statement 

 that the right kind of co-operation on the part of the farmers of 

 Missouri with the newspapers of the State will benefit both, and 

 at the same time measurably increase the well-being of the people 

 and the wealth and importance of the State. 



Co-operation between the farmer and the country newspaper 

 will still further advance the live stock interests of Missouri and 

 advancement of the live stock interests of the State is part of the 

 country-life problem in this commonwealth. My friend, W. L. 

 Nelson, who, besides being Assistant Secretary of the State Board 

 of Agriculture, is one of the editors of the Bunceton Eagle — the 

 best country newspaper in this country, size of the town in which 

 it is published considered. This newspaper has done much to en- 

 courage the breeding of pure-bred stock in Cooper county, and to 

 the Nelson Brothers and their work, I am sure, is due much of the 

 fame of Cooper county Shorthorns. Every saddle-horse man in 

 the country knows that Mexico is one of the greatest saddle-horse 

 markets in the world, though not all of them know that Rex Mc- 

 Donald and most of the other A-grade horses which have been sold 

 at Mexico were foaled on the rich pastures of the northern part of 

 Callaway county. The reputation which Mexico has as a horse 

 market was obtained through the publicity work of the Mexico 

 Ledger, edited by Robert Morgan White and his son, Mitchell 

 White, and the Mexico Intelligencer, edited by Rufus Jackson. 

 Paris, in Monroe county, is getting a national reputation as a place 

 where saddle horses are trained, due to the fact that the town has 

 two of the best country newspaper men in the State in Jack Blan- 

 ton of the Monroe County Appeal, and Thomas V. Bodine of the 

 Paris Mercury, both of whom are doing splendid work in encourag- 



