ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 89 



Mr. Gurler: — It seems there ought to be some practical way 

 of the university doing some work to demonstrate to those dairy- 

 men that they can make a nice profit at less price, which would 

 induce them to undertake raising milk. Records are available, 

 and why not try to urge dairymen through meetings; give 

 them all our bulletins, try to post them along lines that will be 

 beneficial to themselves, and lines followed by men who are tak- 

 ing more interest in dairying. 



Mr. Hart: — You see you have to contend with a consider- 

 able university population there. Four thousand students during 

 the winter, and there is a good deal of milk consumed right 

 there, so we cannot get milk from the immediate vicinity of the 

 institution. If we were located in the country where there was 

 not so much of a demand we could get milk cheaper, but the 

 cities of Champaign and Urbana use a great deal too. 



Mr. Gurler : — To show you a little more plainly what I 

 mean, as much as fifteen years ago I tried, as a representative 

 of the dairy committee, to get a farm of land, a four hundred 

 acre farm or a portion, as a dairy farm and make a practical 

 demonstration of the cost of producing milk and butter ; but I 

 failed utterly at that time to have any effect on the dairymen. 



Mr. Hart : — That is about the case down there. The land 

 sells from $150 to as high as $200 an acre for its agricultural 

 value, and they say they do not have to milk cows ; they can sell 

 corn. Sometimes they grow a little clover and get some nu- 

 trient in that way, as the land has been excessively rich ; but 

 they will have to come to it in a short time, and they will find 

 that they must keep cows in order to keep up the fertility of 

 the land. I have been on farms of over 1G0 acres where they 

 did not have a cow, just lived on what they could buy and sold 

 corn to buy it with. Few of them are interested in beef cattle. 



Mr. Gurler: — Some of them are in trouble along that line. 

 I was talking with some of the intelligent farmer? at a meeting, 

 and these farmers had been growing corn after corn the last 

 few years, and they have had trouble with the corn. This last 

 summer the worms had commenced in the root and ate clear 



