152 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



T see a million sturdy, intelligent, patient men feeding and milk- 

 ing and delivering to a world yet wrapt in slumber, the product 

 from the faithful animals that are their special care. I see a 

 million active boys as they follow the winding path twice a day 

 in the summer and drive the cows from a distant pasture, and 

 in the cold, frosty mornings I see them skip to the feed lot and 

 make old Red get up quick so they can warm their bare feet 

 that are almost frozen. I see the historic milkmaid with the 

 milk bucket on her arm as she wends her way toward the cow 

 lot humming a tune, tho likes of which no operatic singer ever 

 produced. I see the lonely widow woman in an obscure country 

 struggling to maintain a home and keep together a family of 

 children, and whose only hope is a small dairy herd and in her 

 are all the graces of a true woman centered. On her brow is 

 a crown of Glory and her robe of Righteousness is as spotless 

 as the driven snow. To her is due the homage of a Queen, and 

 for these I come here today as their representative to ask your 

 consideration and demand your recognition of those whose 

 business is of such vital importance to America and the perpetu- 

 ity of which means so much to Illinois. I not only ask for rec- 

 ognition, but at this time of peril to this great industry, I ask 

 your protection, and I feel like the boy who hesitated to go up- 

 stairs alone to bed during a very severe thunder storm and his 

 mother went up with him and told him he needn't be afraid, 

 that God was with him and would take care of him. Soon after 

 his mother went down stairs there was a vivid flash of lightning 

 and a keen clap of thunder and the little fellow went to the head 

 of the stairs and called his mother, saying: "Mamma, let me 

 go down with papa, and you come up here and stay with God." 



While the lightning of wealth flashes across the dairyman's 

 firmament and the thunder of oratory shakes the very walls of 

 Congress, let the dairyman stand with the best protector from 

 financial storms they have ever known, and you go and stay with 

 the Gods of war in the oleomargarine camp until the storm is 

 past, and the dairyman's sky is cloudless. 



A representative once asked a lawyer to draft a bill for a 



