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cattle feeder who is not in the position to produce his own cattle, and to the 

 range man who is not in the position to finish the cattle of his own produc- 

 tion. 



LIVESTOCK COMMUNITIES RICHEST. 



When you consider this business from this broad viewpoint, not from the 

 standpoint of the individual feeder, we have three or four things to take 

 into consideration which indicate what we may expect in the future. If we 

 study the breeding, development and the handling of beef cattle we find that 

 in those countries which have been in this business for the longest period of 

 time take the British Isles land is much more productive than it was 

 when it was originally brought under cultivation. If we study the situation 

 in this country we find that beef cattle are found in larger proportions in 

 those states which are noted for their agricultural wealth than they are in 

 those states which are noted for their inability to produce agricultural 

 crops profitably. We may use the pure bred cattle association records as a 

 method of illustrating this point. There are more beef cattle registered from 

 the state of Iowa and from the state of Illinois, the two states which are 

 generally recognized as having the richest land and the most valuable land 

 of any states in the Union, than there are from any other two states in the 

 United States. We find that there are more cattle registered from these two 

 states in proportion to their area than there are in proportion to the areas 

 of any other states in the Union. This indicates that as the country develops 

 and the land increases in value the habit of producing pure bred livestock, 

 which reflects a successful production of beef in the past, increases. 



I was interested in a study in the state of Missouri. Nodaway county 

 is the richest county which we have in the state of Missouri. It is the only 

 county, I believe, in that state in which land ever sold for agricultural 

 purposes alone for over three hundred dollars per acre. That may seem 

 like a low price to people in Illinois, but to Missouri it looks rather excessive. 

 Nodaway county produces more pure bred beef cattle in proportion to its area 

 than any other county in Missouri. It has the richest soil of the state. 



In the state of Kansas we find exactly the same thing true. Brown 

 county is one of the counties in Kansas in which land sold for agricultural 

 purposes for three hundred dollars an acre, or above. We find' that in Brown 

 county they feed more cattle in proportion to the area than in any other 

 county in the state. We find that Brown county registers more beef cattle 

 than any other county of like area in the state of Kansas. 



The point I am trying to bring out here is that through a series of 

 years we find that those men who are most successful in the handling of 

 their land, those communities that are most successful in the development 

 of their land, those communities in which land registered its highest value 

 for agricultural purposes are communities that have been devoted con- 

 sistently one year after another to the production of livestock and' to the 

 feeding of them out on the farm. By producing our own cattle, producing 

 our feed, finishing our cattle for market thus we furnish a market for our 

 crops, we furnish a market for our labor, we furnish fertility for our soil, 

 which we cannot secure in any other manner. Those are problems which 

 each man has to solve for himself. But we cannot expect to do this by 

 handling the ordinary class of cattle. You will find that the successful man 

 who produces his own livestock is the man that uses the best bulls that are 

 used in that community. There may be an occasional man who has the 

 ability to go to a central market and buy cattle cheap, ship them home, keep 

 them for a comparatively short period; he may ship them back to market 

 and make a profit on them, but the ordinary man never made a profit in the 

 production of that kind of cattle. , 



In the end the thing we want to do is to get on a safe and sound basis 

 where we will produce cattle that will mature early, that will make rapid 

 gains and that will gell to advantage when finished, 



