FOURTEENTH ANNUAL, YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 495 



production — I like that English word — is of more value than the output 

 of all the coal mines of the state. I am not sure but what it is of more 

 value than the iron mines and the output of the steel trust. The secre- 

 tary of our state board of agriculture, Mr. Corey, I think will have some 

 figures on that subject pretty soon that will surprise you. The worst 

 waste is the waste of our soil fertility. You are not growing any more 

 grain today on land worth $150 an acre than you did when it was worth 

 $50. Our present system of renting is wasting our fertility. It is to the 

 interest of the land owner to have his land increase in value, but as a 

 rule the renter is trying to get all he can out of it — to loot and rob it, 

 and then say, "After me the deluge." 



You ask what has that to do with the cattle business. Everything, 

 gentlemen. Unless we maintain the fertility of the soil, we can't go on 

 feeding cattle, and they will be fed in the Argentine and in Australia. 

 So long as corn is worth within from 18 to 20 cents of the price of wheat, 

 just that long men will grow corn, and just that long you will see our 

 lands going down in fertility. The landlord says there is more money in 

 corn outside the steer than there is inside, and so he says to the tenant: 

 "You must grow corn; not a cent for buildings." Our cities are growing 

 and they will keep on doing so gradually, although not so fast as they 

 have in the past, because the lure of the city, its lights, its paved streets, 

 its jollity, will bring new people into it from the country. Our immigra- 

 tion goes mostly to the cities. Every year the area given over to the 

 special purpose cow for dairy purposes is increasing. It takes all of 

 New England and New York and part of Canada to supply the milk for 

 New York, Boston and Philadelphia. It takes a large part of the state 

 of Illinois to furnish milk for Chicago; another large slice for St. Louis. 

 And so the beef steer is being shoved back — and back — and back. The 

 short grass country that can be used for grazing purposes is decreasing, 

 and hence w'e are to have less and less cattle from the range and the ranch 

 as the years go on. There are just enough nesters and dry farmers scat- 

 tered over that country to spoil it for anything else — and they spoil 

 themselves generally in an attempt to do that. By and by we will have 

 a sensible plan; cut that country up into large tracts of three or six sec- 

 tions or a township, and then grow alfalfa, and then you will fatten your 

 steers out there and you won't get them for baby beef. 



The next question is, where are you going to raise your cattle? I 

 have had a good many men — ^some of the professors of our colleges — 

 try to explain to me that a man can get rich (I2V2 per cent, I believe, on 

 $200' an acre land) by buying a lot of Short-horn cows of the common 

 sort, and a first-class Polled Angus bull, and let them run the machine, 

 while he sits on the porch and watches the calves sucking the cows. You 

 know that you can't keep a cow a year and raise the calf to weaning for 

 less than about $35 a head. How is this to be remedied on land worth 

 $150 an acre? We can help that, not in a big wholesale way, as Mr. 

 Smith says, but by limiting our cows to about $10.50 (if we let the 

 calves run to them maybe $20 at the outside), and by so improving our 

 pastures that it takes less than two acres of grass to keep a cow during 

 the summer time, ^.nd the rent of another two acres to keep her tlirough 



