460 Missouri Agricultural Revort. 



and the assistant defending his action gave the reasons why he 

 placed this certain horse at the head of the class, etc. "Your rea- 

 sons are wrong," said the professor. About this time a farmer 

 who had listened to the controversy said, "Doctor, when you and 

 your assistant disagree, how are we farmers to know what to do, 

 or what horse to select as the best?" The professor's reply was, 

 "Hoot, Mon, dinna you ken that I am boss." 



Now, I am not boss here, but if my little experience will be of 

 any benefit to you I will be glad, indeed, to relate it to you and to 

 give you so far as I can, in the limited time that I feel I must keep 

 you, the system of handling horses in our State, more particularly 

 on my farm. 



Conditions are quite different there from the conditions we 

 find here. It seems to me that if I lived down here in Missouri 

 with your splendid limestone soil, your wonderfully rich grasses, 

 your pure water, and in addition to that, your almost ideal climate, 

 that I could do bully good raising horses. Speaking in a compara- 

 tive or relative sense, it seems to me that you have a vast advantage 

 over horse breeders who live in. that frozen state of the north, of 

 which, however, we are inordinately proud. But there we have to 

 feed and house for at least six months during the year at great 

 expense, while you down here are pasturing and raising your horses 

 on cheap feed without the extra. expense of feeding and stabling 

 we have to meet; so, therefore, it occurs to me, in looking at the 

 situation here, that Missouri has wonderful opportunities for the 

 development of this very important industry, and a very profitable 

 industry too, bcause I agree with the distinguished and talented 

 gentleman who pursues the profession of auctioneering that there 

 is no danger, not at least for years to come, that we will suffer 

 any material setback in the way of prices of draft horse flesh. As 

 he says, it is the original and necessary motor power that no in- 

 ventive genius so far has been able to successfully supplant. I 

 rode across the state of Dakota last year in company with the 

 president of the North Dakota university, a wonderful man he is, 

 a man of genius and vision. We were discussing that wonderful 

 state as we rode for hours over that level rich prairie, and I re- 

 marked that I could see now why I couldn't bull or bear the Chicago 

 wheat market, and I said, "Your resources are wonderful, aren't 

 they?" "Oh, yes," he said, "but you don't see all the resources of 

 this state," and he went on to describe to me the great underlying 

 mines of coal in. that state, their great value, and said, "There is 



