LIVE STOCK breeders' ASSOCIATION. 1^9 



which the housewife was more wiUing than many to spend hours in the 

 preparation of a cheap piece of meat. I well remember a Thanksgiving 

 dinner taken at this house. The good lady had spent her whole morn- 

 ing drawing shreds of bacon through the tough muscles of a jack rabbit 

 with a larding needle. She was making marbled meat. We do not 

 ordinarily think of eating jack rabbit, but through her industry 

 she certainly made this a very fine victual. Our way is best ; human 

 life is too valuable to spend larding jack rabbits, but it costs more 

 money to get the kind of meat we prefer. ' 



BREEDING PURE-BRED STOCK AS A BUSINESS. 



(Mr. Clarence Eagsdale, Moberly, Mo.) 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : 



When I commenced working on the subject, I found it so vague and 

 so indefinite that I hardly knew what was best to say about it. I 

 finally thought best to take up only one phase of the subject assigned, 

 and try to do something with that, and so I have written, in a rambling 

 way I fear, about important points in "Breeding Pure-Bred Live Stock 

 as a Business." 



There are few men who start out in life saying 'T will do such 

 and such business, or follow a certain profession, and when I am of 

 middle age I will have my afifairs in a settled condition and can then 

 realize the fruits of my early labor." Very few of us work to any definite 

 plan, and keep at that work, until our ambitions are accomplished. 

 We are led to take up certain lines of business by surrounding circum- 

 stances, parental influence or, more often than not, by the urgent need 

 of earning the almightly dollar, the choice of the way to acquire it 

 being a secondary consideration. We have, so to speak, been forced 

 into a certain way of earning our livelihood, or have drifted into this 

 or that business, instead of having deliberately chosen it. 



This is especially true of the breeding of pure-bred live stock. 

 Most breeders have made it a side issue, going on at the siame time with 

 some business which has perhaps accumulated wealth for them, and treat- 

 ing their live stock industry as a diversion, or an experiment instead 

 of a money-making business. I take it that when we smaller fellows 

 discuss the improved live stock business, as a business, we mean it as 

 a money maker, not a mere money spender, and that if we pursue it 

 we do so because it will bring in profitable returns in cold cash; at the 

 same time we are much indebted to these men of station and of wealth 



