SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART V. 327 



we have in value over thirty-one million dollars, consisting of cows o£ 

 three years old and over; over forty-one million dollars in value of heif- 

 ers and cows one year old and two years old, and about thirty-one mil- 

 lion dollars in value in steers and those feeding for the block, I men- 

 tion this to show you the importance and the great investment in the 

 dairy industry in the state of Iowa. That is not all. This gives suste- 

 nance and employment to thousands and thousands of farmers in the 

 state of Iowa and, taken in conjunction with that, the value of the land 

 which is used in supporting this great dairy industry, we have an 

 immense fortune, and the output every year is immense I am creditably 

 informed that the output of the cow and the hen annually exceed the 

 output of the gold and silver of all our mines in this country. 



We meet here to discuss questions which are of interest and im- 

 portance to the dairymen and manufacturers. You might think that 

 those things would become stale and old but, as has been often said, 

 there is no such thing as standing still, we either go forward or back- 

 ward. The truth of the matter is that those who have been interested 

 in the work realize the most that we are still groping in darkness, as 

 it were, as to many things that have not yet been accomplished. There 

 is a great field for saving and as the lands in the state of Iowa and 

 other states are becoming more valuable, as you are all aware, there 

 is no question but that such meetings as this will be in great demand, 

 where ideas may be exchanged and conclusions formed and benefits 

 derived therefrom, because there must be more intense farming the 

 higher the price for land becomes. 



We have in our state one of the finest agricultural colleges, and I 

 dare say the best in its effort to improve dairying of any in the Union; 

 I do not wish to belittle or rob others of any of their achievements or 

 the great benefits that have been derived from them, but our state has 

 finally contributed that which was necessary for a long time for the 

 education of many men and of farmers' sons of our state in the differ- 

 ent branches of the dairy, to build a dairy barn and appropriated money 

 to buy additional land where in a practical and scientific manner those 

 things we all need to know will be demonstrated. 



There has been, which I am sorry to say, too much of a tendency in 

 times gone by to be careless in some of the work in manufacturing, but 

 this I hope will soon be overcome, but the blame for this should not all 

 be laid at the door of the buttermaker or the dairyman because he has 

 not been stimulated, but a great deal of this has been caused from the 

 fact that that man gets a half cent or a cent above. I stated a year 

 ago, at a meeting held in another city, my friends of the association, 

 buttermakers and manufacturers, and I state it again because I believe 

 it to be true, by lowering the standard of your butter and the larger 

 proportion you make of seconds you are offering the greatest encour- 

 agement you can to the manufacturers of oleomargarine. 



The fact is this question of the dairy is in the minds of our best 

 people of all our lands, in the largest cities, in the smallest hamlets. 

 It is the purity of the article they want. You have no doubt read 

 accounts of the physicians report of the danger from impure milk, and 



