SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 537 



this work" has already begun. Our best-known importers are also breed- 

 ers. There are importers who are not breeders, but merely speculators, 

 just as there are in cattle, hogs, or any other kind of live stock. These 

 men have never been of any advantage to any breed of live stock 

 they ever undertook to boom. 



The question therefore arises: Can the better class of American farm- 

 ers undertake this work? Why not? The average price of an imported 

 stallion, as shown by the reports made to the custom-house by the import- 

 ers themselves, is not very far from $400. Cannot the farmer afford 

 to buy the best brood-mares that are entitled to pedigree and mate them 

 with the best stallions, whether imported or not, and sell the product 

 at such figures? 



In the past, and, no doubt, for some time to come, there will be magle 

 in the word "imported", the assumption being that there must be some 

 special virtue, some special merit, in an animal which somebody valued 

 sufficiently high to go to the expense and risk of importing from a foreign 

 country. On this same principle, we are told that men buy "imported" 

 wine, in blissful ignorance of the fact that it may be, and often is, grown 

 in California, shipped to France, put up in French bottles with French 

 labels, and sold to credulous tipplers under the impression that they are 

 getting something superior. We are also told that American cheese has 

 often been shipped to Canada, put up in new dress, and sent back with 

 the brand "imported". 



Now, the mere fact that a horse, cow or anything else has been 

 imported does not necessarily add anything to its value. Its value must 

 depend upon the individual merit of the animal and not on its travels 

 by water or land from one country to another. 



There is no doubt but that in developing this American breed of draft- 

 horse we must rely upon foreign blood, but it must not be blood brought 

 over for the purpose of speculation, but purchased on account of its actual 

 individual worth and pureness of pedigree or correct breeding. Given 

 these, even approximately and the American farmer can not only breed 

 a superior class of draft-horses but grow them cheaper than they can 

 be grown in any part of the old world. 



Farmers who know a good draft-horse when they see it, and secure 

 the best stock they can find, will, in our judgment, make big money in 

 the next ten or fifteen years by using these draft-mares and stallions, 

 where they own one, in the ordinary work of the farm, and selling their 

 colts to men whose business it is to develop them, or feeding them on 

 balanced colt rations and then selling them to horse-breeders. This 

 is the way the thing is done in Belgium, England, and Scotland. In 

 France and Belgium, particularly, the man who grows the colt is sel- 

 dom the man who sells the stallion. We do not think that the farmer 

 who has good horses entitled to registry, and mates them with intelli- 

 gence, will need look long for a purchaser of a first-class colt for $100 

 at weaning-time, and occasionally he will produce one that will be cheap 

 at twice the money. 



