Live stock breeders' association. ■ 223 



Missouri is a great State. It is capable of producing all classes of 

 horses, and I say "God-speed" to every man who can breed any of 

 these classes profitably. If he finds there is a demand for them, it is 

 not only to his interest but it is his duty to endeavor to fill the demand. 

 We need to pay more attention to the breeding, not only of horses of 

 all classes, but of mules. Missouri is a natural stock growing State. 

 There is no state whose grasses are more nutritious, whose waters are 

 purer, no state that can produce a higher type of all kinds of stock than 

 Missouri, and the preservation of our farms, of our agriculture, de- 

 pends upon live stock breeding. I wish I could impress this on your 

 minds so strongly that you would go home and preach this gospel to 

 everyone — that the cultivation of our farms in cereals, in the production 

 of grains, and marketing the crops, which are so produced, is sure 

 to bring ruin eventually to those farms, as it has done in all the older 

 states of the Union, as it has done in Europe and throughout all nations 

 of the world, which are now buying the cream of our soil in order to 

 raise profitably any sort of crops. 



A few years ago I visited Europe. I had at that time served a 

 term at the head of the Department of Agriculture in this country. 

 Through the London papers. Sir John Laws of the Rothemstead Experi- 

 ment Station saw that I was there ; he invited me to become his guest 

 and to visit his experiment station, which invitation I accepted. About 

 the first thing he did was to take me to his library and show me the 

 reports which had been published by the Agricultural Department of the 

 United States, saying: "I know you just as well as your own people do," 

 and then he gave me a very severe lecture. He said : "Your people are 

 selling ofT the cream of their farms to us Europeans." He took me 

 to his stables. "Here," he says, "is cottonseed meal and linseed meal, 

 the cream of the land of your country. I am buying it; English^ 

 Scotch, German and French farmers are purchasing it and are getting 

 just double what they pay for it, notwithstanding the freight from your 

 country here. We feed it to our stock and get compensation in the 

 growth of our animals, and when we distribute the manure over our 

 farms we again get back our purchase money." He said: "You are 

 bringing ruin upon your country, and if I were an American I would 

 insist upon having a law passed to prevent the exportation of the very 

 cream and fertility of the soil." He showed me some of the fertilizers, 

 the phosphates, which he was buying from this country, and he said by 

 and by this will be exhausted, and you in America will be in the same 

 condition that we are here in Europe. 



I refer to this as an illustration to show that we are causina: the 

 ruination of our farms when we sell off our crops; we are selling the 



