184 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



cents a pound for that butter delivered at the country 

 store. Now remember, this was about fifty years ago, and 

 it was good butter, too. It was all right. And he said to 

 me, *1 understand that some of our neighbors here are 

 getting in cows, and I am wondering whether we are going 

 to have a market for our butter very much longer at six 

 or eight cents a pound. Won't we have to take less?" 

 What was on his mind? Wasn't it this overproduction 

 proposition? Wasn't he thinking of that? I have thought 

 of it since that, and I believe he was thinking of over- 

 production then. There isn't a man in this audience, I 

 have put this proposition up from California to Maine, and 

 I have asked somebody in these audiences to answer me 

 this question, is there another product that you can think 

 of, another agricultural product, in which the price has 

 been more stable than it has on dairy products in the last 

 fifty years? No. I don't know, we may have over-pro- 

 duction in time, but I believe that if we make a good, clean, 

 wholesome product and go on with the work such as the 

 National Dairy Council is doing, that we are not going to 

 be troubled by over-production in the lives of almost any 

 of us here in this room. You know there have a lot of us 

 been asleep at the switch, the dairymen have, in the past, 

 up to about four or five years ago. What has happened, 

 so far as soft drinks are concerned? You go to the south 

 especially, and you see there and all over this country, 

 advertising, advertising everwhere, millions of dollars spent 

 in the advertising of Coca Cola. What has the dairyman 

 done as compared with that? Very little. When you see 

 this wonderful advertisement that they put up of the fine 

 looking young lady with the blush on her cheek, passing 

 out a glass of Coca Cola you want to remember that Coca 

 Cola never put that blush there. Never in the world. It 

 was milk. She must have been a milk-drinker, because 

 Coca Cola would never do it, but yet we kind of sit around 

 and don't advertise our product as we should, or anything 

 like the way we should. 



Of course I will admit that the profits on our products 

 are not as great as on some of the products like oleo. I 

 know what oleo costs. It costs about twelve cents a pound 



