144 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



limit t© its increaserl production. This has been substantially the his- 

 tory of China — a country which has given up its animals and in which 

 the one problem is that of securing enough from the land to feed the 

 people. Under conditions such as these, there is no margin of safety, 

 and when the lean years come, famine is inevitable. 



The American standard of living, however, is on a higher scale. We 

 have a system of universal education, for example, which demands the 

 children for the first fourteen to twenty years of their lives. Under 

 such circumstances our young people are a liability and not an asset. 

 The women of our race are considered as mothers and home-keepers, 

 and not as laborers. We expect to surround our families not only with 

 the absolute necessities of life, but witli many of its luxuries, among 

 v/hich we have, up to date, counted the service of domesticated animals. 

 And as long as we consider the on-coming generation of children is to 

 be cared for and educated and developed for its own responsibilities, in- 

 stead of regarding it as a means of supporting us in our generation, 

 just so long will quality be uppermost in mind instead of quantity. What- 

 ever individuals here and there may do, the common sense of the masses 

 of men and women will limit the production to such numbers as can be 

 comfortably cared for, properly fed and housed, and adequately edu- 

 cated, because one of the fundamental requirements according to our 

 racial proclivities, Is animal food and animal service. 



Moreover, a race which so surrounds itself with animal life is not 

 only well served from year to year, but its protection against famine 

 is absolute. If approximately half the acreage of crops is consumed 

 by animal, there is never danger to human life wlien the lean years 

 oome. All that is necessary is to eat a few more animals, whose re- 

 moval marvelously reduces the consumption of crops. 



If we had only a system of private education supported by the wealthy 

 people for their own sake, the unthinking masses might force upon the 

 country as a whole the present conditions of China; but with a system 

 of universal application, which demands that all the children of all the 

 people shall be prepared for their own generation and not used for the 

 maintenance of this, such conditions, as I regard it, are impossible, 

 and here lies the ultimate guaranty as to the permanency of the live 

 stock industry. 



Under pioneer conditions the live stock business was enormously 

 profitable, and even somewhat recently the desire has been to buy up 

 two or three carloads of range steers and make "a hatful of money" in 

 ninety days. The breeding business, too, has not been destitute of the 

 speculative feature. There has been much traffic in pedigrees, which 

 is not far from mild gambling. The sales ring has witnessed prices 

 that certainly are without reason in any kind of business sanity — prices 

 that can not be genuine and which discourage the mass of farmers from 

 buying bred stock, especially cattle, as freely as they ought. 



It is high time that we sloughed off the whole speculative idea re- 

 garding live stock husbandry, and settled down as rapidly as possible 

 upon a solid business basis in which the profits are not expected to be 

 phenomenal, but moderate and stable. I have read much about money 



