46 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



the fact is that in the last ten years the agricultural interests in 

 America have been getting a fair recompense and now they have 

 got it they are going to hold it, not altogether on account of their 

 selfishness, but because ninety millions of people of this country 

 have got to be fed and this great onrush that has been going on 

 for the last thirty years, taking the boys from the farms and put- 

 ting them in the offices has taken away and has sapped the blood, 

 the brains and the sinew that was necessary to maintain the 

 greatest industry of this Republic. 



Then there is a further responsibility that rests upon us and 

 that is to develop the great opportunities that lie before us and to 

 have the manhool not to shirk the responsibility. 



We have read in times past of famines in the great nations 

 and would it require a great stretch of imagination to see this 

 country in fifty years time with its increase in population and a 

 decrease in its production, to see the United States of America 

 on the verge of a famine. We have been selling the fertility of 

 the soil, so I say there is a responsibility that we should not 

 shirk. It is the responsibility of feeding the people of this coun- 

 try for the next fifty years and that can be done only by conserv- 

 ing the resources of this country on the farm. 



Without criticism of those who have been having great head 

 lines in the papers about the conservation of the country, the 

 thing that comes to us is getting down to the bottom of con- 

 serving the resources, and that can only be done by the farmer. 



You cannot take your land in Kane county that was pro- 

 ducing thirty or forty years ago forty or sixty bushels of corn 

 to the acre without the care and scientific attention that it should 

 receive until you get down to twenty-five bushels an acre, you 

 cannot follow that policy, for if you did the end would come in 

 the life time of many of us. You must produce enough to sus- 

 tain the life of the community. 



This great problem rests with the men who have the cour- 

 age and the energy to meet these problems. No food that the 

 world has ever known has the sustaining quality of good pure 

 milk. No food can be produced as economically and as well as 

 good pure milk, and when you are doing that with a proper sys- 



