EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI 327 



The cheapest beef in New York city today is six-weeks'-old-beef. In 

 the face of this we cannot expect men to raise calves that are not going 

 to be profitably productive when they reach cowhood. So you see that 

 the high price for beef, for veal and for feeds is working adversely to 

 the dairy interests. We are entering a period when the buttermaker 

 will have a hard time to get a sufficient amount of butterfat; we are 

 approaching the time when the farmer is going to begin wasting the 

 fertility of his farm. We will then, as they were twenty years ago, 

 be on a one-crop basis and I fear that in a country like ours it would 

 be very detrimental to get back on that basis, because, remember this: 

 it takes some time to encourage a man to begin milking cows and 

 when he does begin it takes three years for him to breed, raise and de- 

 velop a good cow. 



Patriotism is good while it lasts and I know that there are some who 

 will milk cows at a loss for some time. We know that a soldier is 

 patriotic in the trench until the blood is drawn from his body. It is 

 the same with the farmer. He will be patriotic until his finances are 

 drawn from his possession. In conducting the dairy farm today we are 

 paying the highest price for food stuffs, labor and supplies that we have 

 ever paid, and I regret to admit it to you today that it is only the 

 good cow, cared for by the good caretaker and fed as she should be that 

 is making money. I believe that every patriotic man connected with 

 the dairy industry today should realize that the basis of the dairy indus- 

 try and of agriculture and the basis of civilization and progress is the 

 cow. And when it is just as easy and cheap to raise a good cow, as 

 cheap and easy to milk a good cow, as it is to raise and feed a poor cow, 

 I believe that we should speed up our efforts to improve the cattle of the 

 country. The educational propaganda that was put on in Iowa a few 

 years ago has done much toward eliminating the poor cow from our 

 herds. We should breed up our cattle so that even as we need them, 

 we will have th€m. And at this point I would say; when the agriculture 

 of any country reaches a point where it is impossible to make a profit 

 from the dairy cow, then there is no way possible to make money from 

 any branch of farming and agriculture has started to decline. 



We have a real problem before us at the present time. Upon the way 

 we conduct the dairy industry at this time depends very largely the char- 

 acter of the dairying and therefore the agriculture we are going to have 

 in the future, and it is going to test our patriotism. 



Our world is short of fat at the present time. In Europe they have 

 slaughtered up to date more than one hundred million producing animals 

 and of these at least one-third have been cows. When the embargo was 

 placed upon the exportation of food stuffs, Holland ordered one-half mil- 

 lion cows slaughtered with one-half million to be slaughtered later on. 

 France is in the market for one million cows when the war is over. Only 

 in American can cows be secured and if we slaughter our cows, we will 

 not be able to supply the demand. 



There is no better business proposition we can go into on the farm 

 today than that of raising dairy cattle providing we raise good ones. 

 People will not export poor cattle and let me tell you that when this 



