Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 443 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 



(Dean F. B. Mumford, Columbia, Mo.) 



It will hardly be necessary for me to say that the College of 

 Agriculture, the teachers and the instructors and investigators in 

 that institution with myself, extend to you a cordial welcome to all 

 the opportunities which are here provided, and it gives us pleasure 

 for more than one reason. I think I have met with this association 

 every year since its establishment. The first year we met in the 

 office of the department of animal husbandry and we did not need 

 any more chairs at that time than belonged to that department. 

 About eight men, altogether, comprised the Missouri Draft Horse 

 Breeders' Association. The association has grown from year to 

 year, and I judge from the attendance here this afternoon that it 

 has increased about ten. times during the last year. I hope that is 

 the case. 



I am glad to speak a word of welcome to you because I have 

 great faith in the draft horse. I can, with great sincerity, en- 

 courage the breeding and improvement and extension of the draft 

 horse business in this State. I have yet to be convinced that the 

 motor tractor will take the place of the horse in our ordinary farm 

 operations on the ordinary farm. 



The size of the average farm in the State of Missouri is 125 

 acres and you can readily understand that the farmer who owns 

 125 acres will not be able for a very long time in the future to buy a 

 motor tractor to do his work, and if he could, it would do only a 

 part of his work. We must have horses. The breeding of draft 

 horses is an economic project. It is a profitable project for the 

 farmer. I have always had some doubts about the wisdom of 

 advising the average farmer to breed trotting horses or high- 

 class saddle horses that bring a high price and are valuable on the 

 market. The man who loves a horse, who would rather handle 

 horses than to eat, the man who talks horse and thinks horse and 

 dreams horse, is the man to handle that kind of a horse, but for 

 the average man the heavy or draft horse will be a safer horse to 

 breed. 



Investigations in farm management show it costs nearly $100 

 per year to keep a horse on the farm. When you keep a big draft 

 horse a year you have to get $100 out of him somehow in order to 

 just pay his keep, to say nothing of the profit. A few good draft 



