196 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



BIGGER AND BETTER CROPS. 



E. T. Ebersol. 



"By a logical system of reasoning, I feel there ought to be 

 at this time nine or ten thousand people at this meeting. I went 

 into a town south of Toliet two weeks ago tonight having a popu- 

 lation of 200 people. There were at that time 118 persons, with 

 a majority of women, in the audience, and if you have 18,000 

 people in this town, more than 50 per cent should be present, 

 calculated on the basis of the attendance at Elwood. 



It is true that not all people are interested particularly" in 

 the dairy business. Some people are interested in it from the 

 standpoint of the butter supply, others from that of the milk 

 supply. Only last evening I was in a little town not far from 

 here and at the evening meal I asked for a glass of milk and 

 to my surprise there wasn't any to be had, and yet in that town 

 during the month of October the receipts to the farmers for 

 the production of the following articles, poultry, eggs, butter 

 and cream, was somewhat as follows. I will read the receipts. 

 For the first day $172.20; for the second day $230.97; the third 

 day $111.52 ; the fourth day $220.43, and it runs on down to the 

 eighth day, $545.53. This was in the town of Murrayville and 

 the farmers were bringing in their produce and taking back 

 this money, an average of $193.84 a day, and yet nobody had 

 thought of Murrayville as being a dairy or poultry region. These 

 figures, it seems to me, are worth your consideration. 



I cannot resist mentioning one thing that occurred and 

 you will pardon the reference. Mr. Clark mentioned the value 

 that would come from a Cow-Testing Association in your 

 neighborhood. When I taught at Gibson City, Illinois, I had 

 a class in agriculture make, under my direction, tests of milk 

 for the farmers who cared to send in samples for that purpose 

 to our laboratory. Quite a number of the farmers availed them- 

 selves of the opportunity and sent in samples of milk to be 

 tested and many tests were made. In some cases milk was tested 



