140 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



you breeders of Illinois, that has been on my mind somewhat as 

 I look back over the changing conditions since I was a boy upon 

 the farm. 



In those days we used to go to the wagon shop to get our 

 wagons ; we used to go to the little country merchant to buy the 

 groceries and the clothing; the small . merchant and the small 

 manufacturer were the bulwark of society, the strength and liber 

 of the social fabric on which society was built. Does it ever 

 occur to you how it is passing away, how it is the great postal 

 order, mail order business and how these great department stores 

 congesting and aggregating and those that would have been 

 merchants under our old conditions of time became servants and 

 clerks, and the men who formerly made your wagons and sleds, 

 the country wagon shop, are all eliminated and those men are 

 working in the great factories and their children are working in 

 the great factories? They are simply industrial units, cogs in 

 the great wheel of industry that is turning out these automobiles, 

 carriages and wagons , these farm implements of all kinds that 

 we are using upon the farm. What a change has taken place and 

 the question naturally arises, what is going to be the landed 

 gentry of the future and your only answer is, it is he who tills 

 the soil. You men of Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, these great 

 central dairy states, are going to be the landed gentry, and yours 

 is going to be the most honorable occupation of all in the times 

 to come, and within the limit of the knowledge of you, even those 

 of you in middle life, will this become apparent by observation in 

 this country wdien it will be more honorable to till the soil than 

 work in the factories, clerk in the department stores, etc. 



I^ was to ourselves largely that the joke of the 'rube' or the 

 reproach ^He's a farmer' was due. It was because we have not 

 had sufficient respect for our own occupation and w^e have no 

 right to complain ; but the conditions in spite of us are going to 

 work out the salvation to the credit and honor of those who till 

 the soil, and he is the only person who is going to be the boss. 

 The farmer is going to be the only man that is going to be his 

 own boss. 



We hear a good deal about the question of labor on the 

 farm today. It is a most vital and burning question with which we 

 are to deal ; but we have got to solve it, and we have got to pay 



