186 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



DAIRYING IN ILLINOIS. 



J. P. Mason. 



''I don't know whether the dairy business is interesting to 

 you or not, but we are going to talk about it anyhow. We 

 want to encourage more and better dairying in IlHnois. lUinois 

 is about fifth in the rank of dairying states and it ought to be 

 first. A good many people think where land is high they can- 

 not afford to dairy it. That is what you think here perhaps. 

 I have talked to a great many men in central Illinois where 

 land is valued at $250 per acre and higher and grain raising 

 followed, and put this question to them : Do you pay interest 

 on the capital invested including all running expenses of the 

 farm and still leave a profit? They invariably say 'no.' Now 

 either their system of farming is not right, or the land is selling 

 for more than it is worth. The earning capacity of land should 

 govern its price. 



When you sell the grain off of your farm year after year 

 and do not put anything back, you are virtually selling your 

 farm off in wagonloads, and you are getting less and less re- 

 turns all the time. Now, I live in the dairy section of this 

 state. If you live on a dairy farm you have two strings to pull. 

 A dairy farm is a manufacturing plant pure and simple; you 

 grow the raw material on the farm and it is turned out as fin- 

 ished milk and sold. Look at it in a business light, the farm 

 and buildings are your fixed capital, your dairy and tools your 

 working capital. The object of any line of business is to make 

 the working capital pay the highest possible returns on the 

 money invested as well as adding to its value ; the increased 

 value of a farm appearing in increased soil fertility. That is 

 the great object in dairying — ^building up your -soil — and you 

 don't want to overlook that. There is not a business on earth 

 that gets the abuse or will stand the abuse with as much money 

 invested as farming does. Let the farmer adopt the same basis 

 as that on which a banker or merchant runs his business and 



