416 



OLEOMARGARINE. 



her in her pasture return humus to woru-out lands, enabling them to 

 retain moisture and resist droughts, in addition to inviting nitrogen 

 from the atmosphere through the agency of the legumes upon which 

 she grazes. She is the mother of the steer that manufactures beef 

 from grasses, grains, and the by-products of the mills. 



******* 



The farmer who keeps a herd of dairy cows returns through the herd 

 to the soil all the crops he gathers from it, except the products of skill 

 that take little plant food from the soil. The lint of cotton and the fine 

 flour of wheat are among our leading exports, and take little from the 

 soil; the fats of the cow and the plants take nothing whatever. The 

 cow and her calf are prime necessities in reclaiming worn out land. 

 The cotton-growing States that have reduced fertility by too much 

 cropping can bring back the strength of the soil by growing the graz- 

 ing plants and feeding the meal of cotton seed to the dairy cow and 

 her calf, but the farmers of no part of our country can afford to keep 

 cows for the sole purpose of raising calves, except free commoners on 

 the public domains, whose privileges are being contracted to such an 

 extent by injudicious grazing that every year fewer cattle are found 

 on the ranges of the semiarid States. 



The meats to feed our people in future must come, in large measure, 



from the high-priced farms east of the one hundredth meridian of west 



longitude. The feeding steers will be bred on those farms from the 



dairy cows that are now, and will become more and more, a necessity. 



******* 



Population is increasing faster than cattle in the United States, as 

 the following table will show : 



Demand in our island possessions for meats will increase, and 

 demand abroad will call for more of the product of the. cow that is 

 only profitable when placed in the dairy. Dairying will increase in the 

 mountain States as homesteaders take possession of lands on which to 

 raise families, and it will increase in the cotton-growing States as 

 farmers realize the necessity of rotation of crops, and the increase of 

 grazers and feeders that come through this industry. The benefit that 

 comes to the cotton grower through the sale of a little oil to be used in 

 making oleomargarine is very small compared with the dairying and 

 feeding that must be increased to use the by-product of the cotton- 

 seed mills, and the consequent return to the soil of this most valuable 

 of all mill feeds and fertilizers. The best interests of the cotton-seed 

 belt lie in increasing its dairy and feeding interests, rather than in 

 contributing a little oil toward the serious injury of dairying and feed- 

 ing, that should use all the cotton -seed meal produced there. 



