386 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



everything into consideration, in our section of the country we find that 

 the men who have been breeding cattle, handling them economically and 

 feeding out the produce of their own herds, are the ones who have not 

 had to take a loss at any time during the past five years in the handling 

 of beef catttle. We can't say that in regard to any other group of men 

 who have handled cattle. At times we have had a few of them who have 

 made inordinate profits; at other times we find that the speculative in- 

 stinct has run so rampant among them that they have given more for 

 their feeding cattle than the fat cattle were worth when they finally 

 went to market. So we have urged cattlemen to increase their breeding 

 herds and feed out the cattle of their own produce rather than depend 

 entirely upon going to the market and getting a bunch of steers feeding 

 them over a short period of time, paying two or three commissions and 

 freight bills, and taking all the risks incidental to the handling of cattle 

 on the market. 



That, of course, is limited to those sections of the country where 

 grazing is possible. I know that there are places in Iowa (some people 

 will disagree with this statement, but I feel that I know) where the land 

 is so valuable that you can hardly afford to keep it in grass, and under 

 such circumstances you are forced, in order to stay in the cattle business 

 at all, to depend upon somebody else producing them where they can be 

 produced more cheaply. But whether you are handling a breeding herd 

 or fat cattle, the same principles are involved, namely, that cattle are 

 primarily intended to furnish a market for the products grown on the 

 farm. If you are growing grass and roughage to a large extent, the 

 thing to do is to produce cattle that can use it, and that means the breed- 

 ing herd. 



You have another advantage in this section of the country, where 

 feed is plentiful and lower than in the grazing section of the country. 

 The breeding herds that have made a name for themselves are those 

 raised where feed is most abundant and where transportation facilities 

 are such as to enable buyers to get to the place where they were produced. 

 Iowa producers have all these advantages. 



So I might sum up what I have to say this afternoon in a very few 

 words. The beef cattle industry has always been the basis upon which 

 a permanent, prosperous system of agriculture has been founded. Every 

 country, every state, that has eliminated cattle from its system of farm- 

 ing has at the same time reduced its proportion of other agricultural 

 products. The most prosperous sections of America today are those farm- 

 ing sections where live stock and cattle are most abundant. We find 

 that there is always a spirit of unrest among men who produce only one 

 crop, whether it is corn or wheat or cotton; and one of the chief advan- 

 tages in the handling of cattle in this or any other state is that it en- 

 courages and almost forces the production of a variety of crops. It dis- 

 tributes labor thruout the entire year, which enables the cattleman to 

 hire the very best labor that is available in his community, and makes 

 him a much more efficient party. Then, in addition to that, it increases 

 the yield of all other crops because of the fact that you keep live stock 

 on the land; and, finally, it makes, as a general rule, a better class of 



