580 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Now is the time for them to take advantage of that fact, and by sending 

 their sons to agricultural colleges and in all other ways assisting them in 

 the pursuit of knowledge to push forward the advancement of American 

 agriculture. 



For a time at least this advancement must be in a measure a sort of part- 

 nership concern. The young can not succeed without the consent and aid of 

 the old. The old can not hope to have their names honored by posterity 

 unless they hand down to their sons a rich legacy of learning. Let no farmer 

 think that the work of breeding good farm animals — cattle if you will — is the 

 work of a year or a decade. Once more look upon the instance of the Marrs, 

 father and son. The elder laid the foundation, broad and deep. The son 

 built high the superstructure; the net result— that magnificent triumph of 

 agricultural architecture of which the enforced wrecking has been the sub- 

 ject of so much legitimate lamentation. And here is a principle which must 

 not be lost sight of in the breeding business. Conceived in a spirit of infinite 

 patience, it must have time. The wise man is he who is not willing but de- 

 termined that his sons shall take up the work when he is compelled to lay it 

 down. The idea of permanency must pervade every breeding venture. Does 

 any one suppose that the results following the later matings of the Marr 

 females recently sold will even equal the results that would have accrued had 

 these females remained in a body at Uppermill? It is not possible. Tne all- 

 important factor of the master's eye has been eliminated. This does not 

 say that some of these cattle have not gone into the herds of breeders as 

 capable as the late W. S. Marr. Possibly some of them have, but the same 

 unending policy that made the herd great perished with its formulator, leav- 

 ing in its stead and place a harvest of golden guineas such as never before 

 was reaped by breeders of Aberdeenshire Shorthorns. 



Therefore while we counsel the purchase of pure bred stock by the far- 

 mer, we do so only under the condition that the speculative spirit be entirely 

 eliminated. Definity of aim must include steadfastness of purpose, a pur- 

 pose so steadfast as to include the work of generations. Every one of the 

 agricultural colleges is equipped in some shape to preach the doctrine of 

 good blood in convincing terms. Let the sons have the full benefit of this 

 offering so freely made. The voice is not crying in the wilderness today, 

 but aloud in the market places for good cattle, sheep, swine and horses. 

 The sound echoes and re-echoes at the door of every farm house and country 

 hamlet in the land. The buyers for the great packers mount their horses 

 and ride from pen to pen each day, seeking for seven-cent cattle and finding 

 few. At every turn they are met by offers to sell for two cents less. They 

 pay no heed and continue their almost bootless task. Does that not prove 

 that good cattle are needed? Not long ago a good feeding farmer sent a 

 nine-year-old Short-horn cow that had stopped breeding to the shambles. 

 She scaled 1,550 and sold for $5 per hundred-weight, gross intake, $77.50. 

 The same day thousands of cows were sold in the same market, younger or of 

 the same age, for $20 or less and the cost to produce was not greater in one 

 case than in the other. That is right down on the lowest level of reasoning 

 that can be adduced to strengthen the cause of good blood. 



The time is ripe for the good work to be begun. The knowledge of the 

 value of money acquired by the fathers, together with the knowledge of 

 breed, breeding and feed at the command of the son present a combination 



