424 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Money is the object sought; men of every clime bow before the 

 "Golden Calf" and do homage voluntarily, to the best and easiest method 

 of making money. The agriculturist or farmer shares alike in this am- 

 bition and naturally selects, or should select, the surest methods. He 

 has one object in view when he selects his seed, or buys his farming im- 

 plements; he visits the fairs, intent on gathering knowledge; he studies 

 the market reports daily; in all his purchases of whatever he desires 

 his one great object is to make and save money. Follow him as he 

 starts out to purchase stock, cattle, horses, hogs or sheep. See him 

 studying their points of excellence and their line of pedigree, then ask 

 him why he does so? I will predict his reply, "Because their is money 

 in the best." This, then, is one of the motives why the farmer should 

 raise and keep thoroughbred poultry 



If thoroughbred horses, cattle, hogs and sheep are better and will 

 bring more money because they are better than inferior stock, or scrubs, 

 the same rule is applicable to thoroughbred poultry. The quality which 

 makes one head of stock better than another must be on account of its 

 greater money making qualities, and why should this be so? Or in what 

 manner can this be shown? The test is the market value in cash. 



Thoroughbred stock, by universal testimony, is considered of the 

 greatest value. Even to the untutored the word thoroughbred carries 

 assurance of increased value. It has the ring of more money value, while 

 the actual amount in money of thoroughbred poultry does not convey the 

 idea of large sums, yet in the abstract, and by comparison, it is as great 

 as in other stock. To the poultry fancier it means the best, and no farmer 

 should ever be content without owning as good, or even better, than his 

 neighbors. 



In his argument he asserts that "One chicken is as good as another," 

 but will he concede that the same rule holds good with other stock? How 

 is one cow yielding four quarts of milk as good as one whose yield 

 amounts to ten quarts? How is a cow whose milk contains but 2 per cent 

 of butter fat as good as one in which the average butter fat exceeds «3 

 per cent? How is the "Razor back hog" or Arkansas as good as the 

 "Chester white, Berkshire," or Poland China? — What is it that makes 

 the difference? Is it not that the money producing qualities of the best 

 is the result of the introduction of pure blood from animals that are 

 known and recognized as thoroughbreds? And why does the fact of their 

 being thoroughbreds insure the good qualities desired? Adulteration of 

 any kind lowers the market value of all commodities. Dishonest persons 

 resort to adulteration to compete with their neighbors, but the result is 

 always the same as the good can be detected from the bad. Adulteration 

 is the incorporating of an inferior and cheaper article with a good one in 

 order to bring down the price of the best. This practice is widespread, 

 and has for its results the overstocking of the market with an inferior qual- 

 ity of goods a-d a cheapening of values and prices, but it also has the 

 effect of improving the values of pure articles and of making them more 

 desirable on account of their intrinsic purity. The world at large acknowl- 



