FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION 129 



simply the man's wages, what he has made, after paying in- 

 terest on the investment and all ordinary expenses. You can 

 compare it with a hired man who gets wages, house rent, gar- 

 den, and possibly some other farm product. The farmer has 

 his house rent. We are not comparing what a man makes on a 

 farm over the city man. Of course, if he is not making ordi- 

 nary hired man's wages for his labor, he is doing worse than 

 he would have if he just loaned his money at 5% and worked 

 for some one else. 



The reason I dwell so long on this is that the labor income 

 is what we compare these different farms by and to show you 

 the results of these different things. How does the production 

 of the cow affect the labor income, grade or pure bred sires, the 

 crop yield? So, if you understand what the labor income means, 

 we will proceed to some of the data. 



These seven townships contain these 765 farms, upon 

 which most of the figures are based. These farms averaged 146 

 acres. The average number of cattle units on the farms were 39, 

 the average number of cows 31. The average capital on every 

 farm, including the stock and the buildings and equipment, was 

 a Httle over $21,000. 



To those of you not familiar with this district, I may say 

 these are pretty largely dairy farms. Of course there are some 

 few farms that sell a good many crops, but the main thing pro- 

 duced there is milk, and this milk is sold to bottling plants or 

 shipped directly to Chicago or to condensing factories. There 

 is not much butter made in this community. Of course the price 

 is practically the same for all these different farms. 



The first slide has the production per cow, arranged ac- 

 cording to production per cow, to see what the receipts are per 

 cow. The cows range from two to three thousand pounds of 

 milk, four to five thousand, and so on. 



