THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 59 



Wednesday, January 20, 1909. 

 Morning Session. 



Mr. Mason, Vice-President in the Chair: — The president 

 cannot be with us this morning. I want to get at our program 

 and get all we can out of it. 



I hear it stated here that the land is too high-priced to dairy. 

 That is the wrong impression. This raising and selling grain 

 and selling it year after year is like selling your farm by the 

 wagon load. That will not hold up forever. Dairy farming 

 will enrich the soil, you can make it better each year and pay you 

 good profit while you are doing it. There was a farm in Elgin 

 and the man was alawys complaining that the business did not 

 pay. One hundred and twenty acres, 2 to 4 cans of milk and 

 kept 2 hired men. That farm changed hands. A young man 

 went on there that wanted to make something. He tilled that 

 farm, and put up a dairy barn lighted by electricity. He kept 

 three hired men and he is milking 64 or 65 cows and those three 

 men and himself do all the work. His milk bill was $840 for 

 December off 120 acres. You don't hear him complaining about 

 \t not paying, and his bill will be more for January. And while 

 he got $840 worth of milk, he would have 75 tons of fertility to 

 put on his farm. That's worth something, and that's the right 

 kind of farming. If you will dairy it right, you can make it 

 pay on three to five hundred dollars an acre. You got to do 

 some kind of farming different from grain raising. You can't 

 sell off the crops year by year without your land getting poorer. 

 An ordinary farm doubless its capacity in ten years and possibly 

 six. 



We have got to do some intensive farming, more to the 

 acre. With a good crop on one side, and a good cow on the other 

 side, we have not come to our limit yet. You take the silo and 

 alfalfa and clover, you don't have to have half as much pasture, 



