DAIEYING AS A BUSINESS 145 



can possibly make even an intelligent guess as to 

 the price of potatoes or apples or cabbage or onions 

 a year from now, but we are fairly safe in saying 

 that the price of dairy products will not vary 

 greatly from the average of past seasons or from 

 the general average, price level of all commodities. 

 This enables the dairyman to plan for the future 

 with an assurance that is hardly allowed in other 

 farm business. Even in the midst of industrial 

 panics and crumbling prices such as has come to 

 us in the wake of the Great War, his products have 

 exhibited relative price stability. 



There is a certain element of safety and security 

 in our business. The dairy specialist may produce 

 only one product, but he is surely not a one-crop 

 farmer. Surplus supplies of hay are readily car- 

 ried over from one year to another and almost 

 never do we have a failure of all the crops of the 

 dairy farm. 



The greatest argument for the business of cow- 

 keeping is that above any other type of agriculture 

 it makes for soil enrichment. In America we have 

 developed a remarkable agricxdture and have made 

 our typical farmer efficient beyond any other in 

 the world. No other tiller of the soil anywhere 

 produces as much food to a man (not to the acre) 

 as does the American husbandman. We have also 

 succeeded in wringing wealth from the soil as the 

 development and resources of the agricultural 

 states attest. However, we have not yet demon- 



