Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 385 



and improvements that are fine today are obsolete tomorrow. How- 

 ever, the working conditions are fair for the cows, and dollars say 

 that they know it. All the credit for the showing made must by 

 rights go to my father. A good, hard-headed New England Yankee 

 brought up near Boston, where the manure clear for truck patches 

 was ample reward for keeping cows. Such training made my 

 father a martinet in the careful saving of all soil fertility. The 

 business training in a hardware store for years made him quick to 

 see what ought to be done, so after a disastrous experience in a 

 Western Kansas boom — where he got health but lost money — he 

 took up farming on four hundred acres of the poorest land in 

 Webster county. A good medical friend remarked that he had 

 gone out there to starve. The farm was on the historic "wire 

 road" that stood the traffic — freight and passenger — when the 

 Frisco ended at Rolla. 



For years a stage coach stand was maintained on the farm, 

 and everything grown systematically carried off. The soil was 

 absolutely devoid of plant food and humus. With such a condition 

 before him, he realized that stock with the resultant manure was 

 the only salvation. Mules first were taken up — buying mule colts — 

 but not being a good judge of colthood he had a choice collection of 

 runts — mine mules and cotton fellows — that did not bring the top 

 prices. After this experience it was beef. While a little better, 

 this did not pay as it might, for then good eight-months-old steers 

 sold for $7 to $10. However, all this time the land was getting 

 better and in casting about for profit in dollars and profit in in- 

 creased fertility, dairying looked too good not to try. That was 

 about twenty years ago. Then it required nerve to tackle such a 

 game. There was not a separator in the county, not a manure 

 spreader, not a barrel churn bigger than a water bucket, and a cow 

 keeper looked about as good as a sheep herder does to a western 

 cattleman. Since then rapid strides have been made, so much so 

 that now the farmer who goes to town without a cream can in his 

 vehicle is a pretty worthless sort of a fellow. I have been told 

 many times that my father's demonstration of the profits of cow 

 keeping started the ball rolling in Webster county, at least. Per- 

 haps the secret of his success as a demonstrator lay in the fact that 

 everything done, everything accomplished, was intensely practical 

 in its character. That was the Yankee in him cropping out. There 

 was nothing sensational attempted and no millionaire fads taken 

 up. The thing contemplated must be sure to pay or it was not 



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