Thirty-fourth Annual Convention. '^'^ 



will address the audiences at our meetings, I am sure will arouse 

 enthusiasm and help us all to get a better understanding of the 

 dairy business. 



It is highly important that we dairymen begin to systema- 

 tize our dairy business. I am satisfied there are too many men 

 throughout this and neighboring states, who are milking cows, 

 day after day, struggling along from morning until night trying 

 to make a living, or a satisfactory profit from these same cows, 

 without a scratch of the pen toward keeping records of the results 

 of the returns and the expense of keeping up their herds. As 

 you have heard me say before, it is highly important that we 

 consider our cows as individual machines, alive machines, with 

 individuality, which it is necessary to study carefully .each day. 

 We would not think of entering upon any mercantile business 

 without some system of bookkeeping. If we were going into 

 a factory, where we were obliged to operate a number of pieces 

 of machinery, we would have to know positively the results and 

 capacity of each individual machine, and we would keep track 

 of these results in some set form of bookkeeping. How many 

 farmers know, accurately, how much feed their cows consume 

 in a year and what it costs per head to feed these same cows? 

 I feel safe in saying that there are too many dairymen, who feel 

 that the expense and trouble necessarily undertaken in keeping 

 individual records of their cows, will not pay. Let me say, 

 positively, that it does pay; and if you do not think I am right, 

 try it, yourself. If you do not want to try it, try and get your 

 boy interested in your cows, so that he will begin to keep records 

 of the cost of feed and the results at the milk pail. 



At our meeting, last year in Joliet, we decided to under- 

 take quite a number of new features, viz : in the operation of a 

 dairy train, through the northern part of Illinois; the acquiring 

 of a larger appropriation for this Association from the Legisla- 

 ture and the holding of a meeting at the State Fair. I am happy 

 to say that we have been successful in these three main under- 

 takings. In March of last year, we operated a dairy train over 

 the Sante Fe System and within six days talked to many thous- 

 ands of people. We are constantly hearing of good results from 

 that tram. The Sante Fe people are more than pleased and I 

 am of the opinion that when the railroads begin to appreciate 

 the vast results that they can accomplish by the operation of these 



