FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART V. 219 



You remember some of the old poems in the school books, how the 

 poet spoke about the pretty milkmaid and that sort of thing. Mighty 

 little poetry about it nowadays; mighty little poetry about the horny- 

 handed hired man milking the cows, about the steam engine and the 

 separator or the power churn, the refrigerator cars and cold storage. 

 Mighty little poetry about that now. The thing is different than when 

 the poets got in their work for the benefit of the school boy. It's a 

 new thing — the creamery— within the last twenty-five or thirty years, 

 and all the things which I have suggested have come with it. 



The dairy business is not only a new thing in that sense, but a 

 big thing. Y.)u know there are a lot of industries that by their very 

 nature require concentration of capital, the honest wielding of that 

 capital by one or two men, and we take off our hats to that sort of 

 thing, and we are impressed by the magnitude and the dignity of the 

 size of the industry. But when we look at the old farmer, with his 

 overalls and his rough books and his small investment in a few cows, 

 we are a little inclined to think it does, not amount to a great deal, it 

 is not a very big thing; but I want to tell you that, as suggested by 

 Mr. Lombard, that old farmer, with his small investment in a few cows, 

 is a representative of the largest line of agriculture in the United States, 

 cr in the world, save one. 



The total value of the dairy products is about six hundred million 

 dollars per year; the total value of the hogs sold (you know we raise 

 lots of hogs in this country) is only five hundred millions; the value 

 of the hay and forage is less than five hundred million; the value of the 

 cattle that are slaughtered, it must be enormous, everybody knows, but 

 it is only four hundred million dollars. We are impressed oftentimes 

 with the thought that if the wheat crop fails there would be a great finan- 

 cial disaster, yet the whole value of the wheat crop is only three hun- 

 dred sixty million dollars, a million a day, and butter is worth almost 

 twice that much. 



And so with other agricultural products, ihere is none of them that 

 approaches the value, the great value, of the dairy product, except corn 

 which has a value of eight hundred million dollars. So the dairy busi- 

 ness is a great thing, and the old farmer is the immediate representative 

 of that business. It is a big thing and so we may congratulate ourselves 

 that this association in some sense represents one of the greatest indus- 

 tries in Iowa. 



It may be interesting to know something about how Iowa stands in the 

 business, and I am proud to say that as far as butter-making is con- 

 cerned Iowa is easily first. Of the four hundred twenty million pounds 

 of creamery butter made in the United States, Iowa makes almost exactly 

 twenty-five per cent. Now, think of it, with an area of only a little more 

 than fifty thousand square miles we make one quarter of all the creamery 

 butter in the United States. We make, perhaps, ten per cent of all the 

 butter that is made, there being a large quantity of farm (not creamery) 

 butter made in the country. The exact value, as I say, is about six hun- 

 dred millions of dollars. Now, of this value, two hundred seventy mil- 

 lion is the value in butter and twenty-six million is the value in cheese; 



