138 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



THE SELECTION, FEEDING AND FITTING OF A CARLOAD OF 

 SHOW STEERS. 



CHAELES ESCHER, JR., BOTNA, IOWA. 



This seems a fitting text upon which to hang a few remarks illus- 

 trative of this life work that I am engaged in, and to mention some of 

 the merits of the remarkable progress achieved by fitters of carloads 

 of fancy steers. 



While I will endeavor to confine myself to the text assigned me, I 

 may of necessity, for illustration, wander from my subject during my 

 discourse. I but utter a truism when I say ours is a great nation. Al- 

 though the youngest of all the great nations of the earth, she has al- 

 ready achieved a degree of success and prosperity unexampled in the 

 history of the world. Already in vastness of domain, in rapidity of de- 

 velopment, in unrivaled resources, in inexhaustible wealth, and in fer- 

 tility of appliances and wonderful inventions, she stands at the head of 

 the nations of the world. 



With an area more than ^iree times as large as Great Britian and 

 Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark 

 and Greece, or all of the most civilized nations of the globe put together, 

 containing more than half of all the fresh waters of the globe, with a 

 population that has doubled itself every twenty-five years since 1865, 

 and with argicultural recourses capable of sustaining and enriching one 

 billion inhabitants, can anyone question the future greatness of our 

 country, or its vast influence for good or evil on the rest of the world? 



It has been well said that "to the people who own and till the soil 

 belongs the nation." for the soil of a nation is the primary source of a 

 nation's wealth. 



Agriculture is the greatest wheel of all American industries, and 

 stock-raising, in my estimation, is one of the main spokes of this great 

 agricultural wheel. Our country is a country where men have been 

 obliged to do great things, and nothing seems too great for achievement 

 in the minds of the American people. 



The fitting of stock for shows and exhibition purposes was practiced 

 by our ancestors across the sea more than a century ago. Being imbued 

 with the idea that the shows and exhibits were great object lessons 

 for the stockman, and especially for the young beginner, our people 

 began to inaugrate numbers of them, and while we are a comparatively 

 young nation in this line of work, we can already point with pride to the 

 International show at Chicago as the greatest annual show of its char- 

 acter on the face of the globe. There it was that fancy cattle in carload 

 lots were first shown in considerable numbers, until at this recent Inter- 

 national, there were brought together for competition from all over the 

 United States, one hundred and eighteen cars of cattle. 



Ours is a country of large ideas, and not content with the practice of 

 feeding and exhibiting single animals in class, there became a demand 

 for exhibiting in carload lots. The feeding of carloads of fancy steers 



