524 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



of stuff. This experience will only stimulate them to higher and better 

 efforts and the dairy industry is destined to become a more important fac- 

 tor in Iowa agriculture than ever before. 



In the panorama of agricultural progress no branch or phase of agricul- 

 ture has presented more striking change nor more rapid development than 

 the field of dairying. Modern methods have revolutionized the industry. 

 The process of butter making has recently emerged from methods that 

 were crude and ignorant, and in the brief space of a few years attained 

 the rank of an educated profession. We are indebted to the creameries 

 and the creamery butter makers for most of this progress. The good home 

 dairy butter is a standard article today, unexcelled by any other product 

 on the market, but there is comparatively little of it, and without the 

 creamery system nothing like general progress could have been practicable 

 or possible. The cardinal principles of success with the creamery today, 

 as in all times, is economy of production and excellence of finished product. 

 This principle lies at the very foundation of American agriculture, and 

 indeed of every American industry. The records of the last census show 

 that the productive capacity of the average American farmer has increased 

 33 1-3 per cent during the last two decades, and furthermore that the pro- 

 ductive capacity of the Iowa farmer is greater per capita than that of any 

 other farmer in America. Iowa's agricultural products foot up to the neat 

 sum of over a million dollars for every day of the year. The results that 

 have been attained by the Iowa creameries and the Iowa dairy interests 

 have been no small factor in this most creditable showing. 



The past decade has wrought changes of far reaching importance in 

 the agricultural industry of America. We have been undergoing a period 

 of transformation of deep significance. A short time ago at a meeting 

 of the live stock agents of the leading lines of railroad centering at Chi- 

 cago, a representative of an eastern road called attention to the striking 

 fact that twenty years ago the richest and most valuable agricultural lands 

 of America were in the valleys of the Ohio and Miami Rivers and east- 

 ward. Since then these lands have declined from fifty to one hundred per 

 cent in value and the richest, most productive and most valuable agricul- 

 tural lands lie today in the Mississippi Valley and westward. This con- 

 firms the judgment of Horace Greeley and substantiates the statement 

 that "westward the star of empire takes its way." But it does more than 

 that, and it is a condition that is worthy of more than a passing thought. 

 It means more than merely the westward course of the star of empire, and 

 the unlocking of virgin fertility. It means that we who occupy these fertile 

 fields and productive lands have come into possession of the richest herit- 

 age of the agricultural world; a region which is today and must continue 

 to be, a prime factor in the world's food supply and a vital force in the 

 center of the world's greatest activity and progress. We may well pause 

 to reflect on the magnitude of our inheritance. It means new and more 

 exacting conditions, larger obligations and greater responsibilities. If the 

 lands that are today the most valuable and productive are to yield returns 

 commensurate to the value put upon them, and be maintained in their pres- 

 ent state of productiveness, it means that those who occupy them must 



