THIRTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL CONVENTION 21 



as is shown by the above chart and the cow census work of 

 Hoard's Dairyman?" There are two reasons for this. One is 

 that the dairyman may be keeping his cows at a loss, over the 

 cash value of the feed, yet he is making a little profit on the 

 crop side of his business, which enables him to exist. If a man 

 is not making a profit in manufacturing or mercantile pursuits, 

 he cannot long hold the business together, but is soon closed 

 out. The other reason why a dairyman may conduct this kind 

 of a business and still continue to get an existence is that he 

 may be taking it out of his family by having the children do 

 a large amount of work for which they receive no pay whatever. 

 But this is not the slightest excuse for conducting dairying in 

 this manner. Such an existence is worse than failure, as it 

 means lack of schooling for the children, and ruined lives. 



A Wedge of Gold and a Wedge of Poverty. 



Below the intersection, the distance across the wedge be- 

 tween the heavy dotted line and the continuous line represents 

 loss — $18 loss on the cow that produces only 2,000 pounds of 

 milk, and about $9 loss on the cow that produces 3,000 pounds, 

 and this wedge has held many a dairyman down to the poverty 

 line. But the most interesting and instructive "side of this chart 

 is the wedge of space between these two slanting lines above their 

 intersection. The wedge grows rapidly wider as you follow these 

 lines upward, until it is seen that the cow producing 8,000 pounds 

 of milk, just a good yield, costs only $85 for her keep and re- 

 turns a profit of nearly $40, and that the cow which produces 

 10,000 pounds of milk returns $160, of which more than $60 is 

 profit. This is a veritable wedge of gold. 



This is striking evidence in favor of cows of high produc- 

 tion, and against the comparatively large expense of keeping 

 cows of low production. The cost of keep increases but $35 per 

 cow from 2,000 to 10,000 pounds' production of milk, yet the 

 income increases $115, or over three times as rapidly as the 



