EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 255 



outstanding animal widely known, that because of its lack of favor with 

 sire or dam or both has not received an equal share of their estates and 

 by inferior development is not worth so much money. If he has had 

 success in development of ill-fed animals before he may honestly be- 

 lieve he can by painstaking care bring it out into a good animal but if 

 he should publish the actual price he paid those to whom he wishes to 

 sell without seeing the animal would feel sure it must be an inferior one 

 and thus look elsewhere, so he arranges with the seller no more scrupulous, 

 to publish a price (sometimes five times the true price), that will indi- 

 cate a measure of great merit. He is even more detriment to the business 

 than the high-selling boomer. It may be that these boomers are a safety 

 valve on the business by keeping among the breeds enough really inferior 

 animals so that there will always be need of improvement that comes 

 only from the painstaking and intelligent development of the product of 

 the best breeding animals, but like the hog cholera, they multiply the loss. 

 I believe that the integrity of the breeder is a most valuable asset and 

 should be guarded most carefully in business as much as in religion and 

 that his advertising like his pedigrees should be beyond question. Any 

 announcement of the price made by him or his customer will be recognized 

 as advertising. 



As in athletics, we should have clean methods of advertising. Build- 

 ing a reputation takes time and expense of energy, intelligence, stick-to- 

 It-iveness and usually a good deal of money besides; it will be based upon 

 our actions and professions, the real comfort and the profit of it will 

 come after years of effort and expense. Each year's advertising of a good 

 business carefully and honestly conducted works on through life and he 

 who has advertised any given amount each j'ear and lived up to his 

 advertising for fifteen years is getting about fifteen times as much results 

 now as at the start. By advertising do not understand me to confine 

 the term to the use of printer's ink only, though you may limit this last 

 statement to that if you please and it will be found about correct. But 

 I mean that when a boom price has gone on record that by its very nature 

 it is always assailable and sooner or later, usually sooner, it is nailed in 

 plain sight to those who can read it, and that advertisement always re- 

 mains labeled "Visited the herd and found it not up to the advertising." 



The boomer is a detriment to breed and breeders to a great extent by 

 keeping inferior animals in the herds but mostly in his effect on our 

 standing in the court of inquiry for pigs. Boom sales are hard to conduct, 

 buyers always feel it and often really meritorious animals sell below 

 farmers' prices because they fear a boom wherever a high price is an- 

 nounced. Many honest breeders pass up a good animal of popular family 

 just because someone has "boomed" the family, but a high price for a 

 really meritorious animal should not be even mentioned as "boomed" 

 unless other evidence very clear is shown. 



Confidence in our breeders is a fundamental basis of our business and 

 the boomer who destroys confidence takes that which can do him no good 

 but leaves us poor indeed. 



I would absolve the high seller who has taken the best animals and 

 brought out in them by painstaking care and intelligence the high develop- 

 ment which makes them outstanding. He should not be coupled with the 



