THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 437 



census returns will show the same thing for the various counties of the 

 state. Counties of equal area, equal farm population, and of equal 

 productiveness presumably ought to sell out of the state each year the 

 same number of dollars' worth of farm products; but the fact is that in 

 comparing such counties, the records show that the dairy county ships 

 just as many dollars' worth of horses and hogs and cattle and poultry and 

 other farm products as the county where no dairying is carried on, and a 

 quarter or a half million dollars' worth of butter besides. The butter is a 

 net profit to the individual, the county and to the state, and in the last 

 ten years this net profit to Iowa's dairy farmers has amounted to a 

 hundred and fifty million dollars. 



Dairying is a profitable business because it is a sure thing. In a wet 

 year or a dry year a dairyman can raise feed for his cows. When prices 

 are high, or prices are low, the dairyman has money in his pocket. The 

 price of butter is more uniform than that of any other farm product. 

 Last summer cattle sold in Chicago for about eight cents. Now they are 

 selling for a little more than five cents. Just now hogs are selling for a 

 very high price. One does not have to think back very far to remember 

 when they sold for about half of present prices. There have never been 

 any such sudden or violent fluctuations in the price of butter. Many a man 

 has lost the profits of several years by one visitation of hog cholera. 

 Many a man has lost largely in feeding cattle on a declining market, but the 

 man who produces butter is sure of success and is sure of a uniform price. 

 The price varies from summer to winter, but the average yearly price of 

 butter is by far the most uniform and stable and certain of all the prices 

 of farm products. 



These are the reasons why the dairy districts are the most pros- 

 perous portions of this state; the reasons why the wealth of the dairy 

 counties is generally distributed; the reasons why their farmers are uni- 

 formly well to do; the reason why their lands sell for a higher price than 

 other lands; the reason why their banks have more money; the reasons 

 why hard times do not affect their farmers disastrously and the reasons 

 in large part, for the extraordinary and continued prosperity of the large 

 part of the state of Iowa. 



Corn is king in Iowa, but the dairy cow is queen, and the dollars of the 

 Iowa farmers are the product of this royal pair. 



President : We are favored tonight with the presence of 

 J. S. Trigg of Rockford, Iowa, to whom I have to the pleasure of 

 introducing yon. 



THE KICKING HEIFER IN FLY TIME. 



J. S. Trigg, Rockjord, Iowa. 

 The limitations placed upon me by the president and secretary of this 

 association, in the matter of briefly addressing you this evening, on a topic 

 of my own selection suitable for this occasion, are extremely rigid and arbi- 

 trary. I am requested to carefully avoid any reference to the scientific, 

 commercial, financial, practical and statistical phases of the dairy industry, 



