No. 4.] THE AGRICULTURAL SITUATION. • 69 



months at the task. Ellisburg stood second only, I think, 

 as a dairy town in New York. Every cow was hunted out, 

 and her earnings and expenses thoroughly determined. 

 Mr. Jennings wrote seventeen letters to "Hoard's Dairy- 

 man " during the work, detailing with close minuteness all 

 facts, and followed with a general summary. 



Dr. Collier of the New York Experiment Station, in a 

 letter to Mr. Jennings, said : — 



"You are at liberty to use me as authority for the 

 strongest statements it is possible to make, as to the practi- 

 cal value of the work you did in the town of Ellisburg, in 

 the matter of the cow census. I endeavored to duplicate 

 your work, and sent out twenty-five hundred circulars, 

 asking for replies to questions every intelligent dairyman 

 should have been able to answer. I quote from a reply 

 received from one of them : ' I find on inquiry that there is 

 not one man in one hundred of the average farmers who 

 knows anything about what his cows cost to keep them, nor 

 anything about how much butter or milk his cows yield in 

 the course of a year. In fact, they don't know anything 

 about their cows except that they feed them something, and 

 get some milk and butter.' To my twenty-five hundred 

 circulars," Dr. Collier adds, "I received twenty-seven 

 replies. I have no reason to believe that anyone who had 

 the information refused to give it." 



Let me give you in a condensed form what that census 

 disclosed. Understand, at the beginning, that the farmers 

 in that township will average in intelligence on any other 

 subject equal to any township of farmers in the United 

 States. The firmer is trained to see nothing beyond the 

 demonstration in an animal, a tool or a crop ; and to that 

 extent has he weakened his intellectuality and to that extent 

 is he open to the charge of a lack of intelligent understand- 

 ing of the outlines and scope of his own business. The final 

 summing up showed in brief as follows : — 



Whole number of dairy men in the town, 

 Whole number of cows in the town, .... 

 Average number per dairy, nearly, .... 

 Lowest average of earnings per cow in a herd of ten, 

 Highest average earnings per cow in a herd of five, 



356 



5,417 



15 



$18 38 



$81 00 



