SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 539 



demand has in no way decreased. The fact of the matter is it seems that 

 the demand for these horses in our large and still growing cities can not 

 be satisfied. It is safe to say that it will not be satisfied in the next ten 

 years to come; it is safe to say that even after that time if horse prices 

 should decline that the heavy drafters will still be more profitable in the 

 corn belt than light weight horses. 



These heavy draft horses must be raised in the corn belt. There is no 

 other place where they can be raised. To produce them rich pastures and 

 good grain are required. The western man will continue to raise what we 

 call western horses, and he is abundantly able to supply the demand for 

 this class. It is, therefore, left to the farmer in the corn belt, to raise 

 the horse that the western man cannot; to raise the horse which brings the 

 largest returns for food consumed. The corn belt farmer can not afford to 

 raise the light horse; the western farmer can. Farm land in the corn belt 

 has increased from $25 to $75 per acre during the last 10 or 15 years. It 

 will increase as much in value during the next 15 or 20 years. By that 

 time instead of farming on $75-an-acre land the man in the corn belt will 

 be farming on land worth $125 to $150 per acre and upwards. He will 

 have to make that land pay or go out of the business. The supposition 

 is that he will make it pay. 



The time is coming when nothing but pure-bred horses, cattle, swine 

 and live stock of all kinds will be raised in the corn belt. That time may 

 be 50 years hence; it may be farther off than that, but is is surely coming. 

 The man who begins today will be traveling on the right track. He will 

 be setting a pace that those less able to foresee the future will follow in 

 years to come It may be true that it is still too early to urge every man 

 to raise pure-bred horses. The average farmer in the corn belt is not yet 

 prepared to do this. He is, however, prepared to sell off part of his small 

 mongrel horses on the farm and substitute for them good heavy grades 

 of some draft breed. It does not matter so much whether he buys Perch- 

 eron, Clydesdale or Shire grades, but let it be clearly understood that it 

 should be a grade in which blood of some well known draft breed pre- 

 dominates; let it further be understood that the grade selected must be 

 bred to a pure-bred sire of similar blood. 



Back in '75 when the craze for imported sires began to take root there 

 was much indiscriminate breeding. Native horses were crossed with 

 Percherons, Shires or Clydesdales. In the majority of instances the mares 

 were of the roadster type, and consequently did not nick with the stallions 

 used. That was no more than could be expected. Crosses of that kind, 

 while they sometimes produced good colts, they often produced offspring 

 of inferior quality. In too many cases when inferior colts resulted from 

 these crosses farmers concluded, if they had been breeding to a Percheron 

 horse, that the Percheron was not the one wanted. Consequently they 

 switched around and bred the colts of the first cross to some other draft 

 breed and instead of improving the first cross they made matters worse. 

 Had they stuck to the breed with which they started they would have 

 become successful in a few years. As it was, thousands of farmers had a 



