HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE IN MINNESOTA. 281 



thirty or fifty miles of the northern boundary of the state, and 

 within that belt can be raised the best quality of the hard 

 varieties of spring wheat which bring the highest prices in the 

 market. 



We have, as I have said, an excellent climate, one adapted 

 to the growth of all the grains and all the profitable roots and 

 to animal growth. There is no state where better beef, pork 

 and mutton can be raised than in the state of Minnesota. For 

 many years I fed stock on my farm a few miles from here and 

 exhibited the stock in the Fat Stock Show at Chicago. I think 

 for six or seven years I was always able to carry off a full rep- 

 resentation of the top prizes; and I think that half the time 

 I carried off the actual first prizes for the animals on foot and 

 for the quality of the meat of the slaughtered animal. I have 

 probably a dozen and a half or two dozen gold medals which I 

 have taken for fat stock fed on my farm about ten miles north 

 of this city, exhibited in Chicago in competition with all the 

 stock feeders and breeders from Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, 

 Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; and I 

 know that I never found it difficult, by sending down a few 

 animals from Minnesota (and when I say a few animals I mean 

 five or six, showing them against six or seven hundred), to carry 

 off either a third or a half or all of the top prizes. I remember 

 on one occasion, when they had pleuro-pneumonia in Chicago, 

 I did not want to send any young stock down there that I would 

 have to bring back, and I had but one steer which I intended 

 to enter for the beef prize. With that steer I took seven first 

 prizes, amounting to some seven or eight hundred dollars; I 

 took three gold medals, and I do not know how many pieces of 

 machinery that were offered as prizes by the machine men. I 

 think I had a patent pump, a corn drill, and a number of other 

 things. I do know that it is perfectly within the reach of any 

 intelligent man to send better beef, better pork, and better mut- 

 ton, to the market from Minnesota than from any other state in 

 the West. I will not except any; I have met them all, and 

 have never failed to take my full share of premiums. When I 

 say my full share, I took twenty times my share of prizes, al- 

 though I had to hire men to feed the stock. Many of our farm- 

 ers are better off than that, they can feed them themselves. 



