2^ MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



nitrogen, phosphate, potash — we are subtracting these elements from 

 our soil in every crop we produce, and it is just like checking on your 

 bank account — you will come to the end of it in time, as all nations 

 of the earth have done. This should be prevented. You are not philan- 

 thropists ; you are not true American citizens if you allow this system 

 of robbery to go on unchecked ; and one of the chief ways to avoid 

 this injury to our farms is to go to raising stock of all kinds. 



Increase the dairy interests. What wonderful improvement have 

 I seen in our farms about St. Louis, on every dairy farm where they 

 liave been in that business for a few years. They buy more or less 

 linseed meal and cottonseed meal ; they feed it to their stock ; the manure 

 is distributed over the farms; and the pasturage has been more than 

 trebled, wherever a farmer has been carrying on the dairy business 

 for a series of years. The same results will occur in feeding your steers — 

 in raising horses, mules, cattle, sheep, swine — all these animals; and I 

 ask you, as you love Missouri, to become the advocates of a larger 

 system of stock growing in the State, and do your utmost to prevent 

 the sale of the riches of your soil, by sending your cereals to market. 

 This, perhaps, is a little off my subject, but it is germane to it. You 

 wanted to hear about the horse. I want to urge upon you the necessity 

 of raising horses. Missouri has occupied a high position as a horse- 

 breeding State, and she is destined to occupy a still higher one. 



The United States government has established a breeding farm ni 

 Colorado for the breeding of the American Trotting Bred Coach horse ; 

 a horse to be i6 hands high of good style, of good color, of good size, of 

 good breeding, and after a commission was appointed to endeavor to 

 secure the highest type of such a horse, a horse that could be useful for 

 all purposes, and particularly for a coach and a road, park and carriage 

 and farm horse, and after advertising for a typical coach stallion and 

 receiving letters from all sections of the country, saying the writers had 

 just such a stallion, and after a thorough examination the commission 

 finally selected a horse that was raised upon Missouri pastures, fed upon 

 Missouri corn and oats and hay, and drank Missouri water. That 

 horse was a Missouri bred horse, and I had the honor of breeding it. 

 (Applause.) 



Now, then, what sort of horse fills the bill best for the average 

 Misouri farmer? What sort of a horse should be bred to be most 

 useful to the farmer? What type of horse is in greatest demand? Will 

 bring the highest price in market? That is the question that you want to 

 consider. If the farmer is going to erect a building, he is careful before- 

 hand to study the size that he wants, the style he wants, the purpose 

 for which he wants it. He has that all in mind. He would not think of 



