FIFTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 93 



son's shoes he decided he was a man to be trusted and 

 cashed his check. 



We said Mr. Mason had always been a farmer, but 

 there was a period when he was employed in the first 

 cheese factory established in the Fox river valley and in 

 Elgin. 



Mr. Mason was the first president of Chicago Milk 

 Shippers Association, from which grew the present Milk 

 Producers' Association, and he was famous for being able 

 to show the largest percentage of profit in milk production. 



For 12 years or more he was president of Illinois State 

 Dairymen's Association. He was on the program at the as- 

 sociation's second annual convention and a regular atten- 

 dant and worker for the dairy industry up to and including 

 the association's fifty-first annual meeting two years ago. 

 He was close to 77 years of age, having been born March 

 31, 1850. He was the first president of Kane County Farm 

 Bureau and for 22 years was a director and worked in Illi- 

 nois Farmer's Institute. He spoke on farm dairying in 

 every part of Illinois, and for years had far more of these 

 speaking dates than he could fill. 



He was popular as a speaker, not because of any ora- 

 torical ability, but because he told in plain words the work 

 he was doing, how he did it and the results of the work on 

 his own farm, or rather farms, because he had several. 

 The writer has heard him tell fellow farmers many times 

 that there was no better or more profitable business than 

 farming, and especially dairy farming, if done as it should 

 be done by the united force of hands and head. It meant 

 work, he would say, but work is necessary to success in any 

 line of effort, and he would add that there was no place or 

 occupation where a young man, if he would apply himself, 

 could be surer of success than on a farm. 



He made farming pay in large per cent, and for the 

 last 15 years of his life was a director of the Home National 

 Bank of Elgin. He was one of the organizers of the old El- 

 gin Board of Trade and prominent in its affairs during its 

 early years, serving some years as treasurer. 



He was an old-fashioned man — no frills about him — 



