34 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



PRACTICAL IN DAIRYING. 



H. P. Irish, Farina, III. 



President : The next number on our program will be an 

 address by one of our National Educators on the subject "Prac- 

 tical in Dairying," by Mr. H. P. Irish of Farina. 



Mr. Irish : Mr. President, Gentlement of the Association : 

 I do not come before you today as a speaker at all; I come 

 simply as a farmer down at Farina. I am just raising a few 

 cows and some alfalfa. 



I have thought out a little outline of what I would give 

 you this afternoon, but after listening to Professor Eckhardt I 

 have got full. It was my good fortune last week to listen to 

 Judge Lynch, Mr. Shilling and several others, and I got full 

 then. When I get full about the silo I do not know how I am 

 going to talk about dairying. 



Professor Eckhardt told us about how the farms in the 

 old countries are depleted, but how about our own in our older 

 States. I can talk about one right in my own family, my grand- 

 father's. He lived in Connecticut and I was there a few years 

 ago with my son to show him where his grandfather lived 

 when he was a boy. My father raised eight children; he made 

 enough on that farm to buy a good farm near a manufacturing 

 village and support his faimly, too. When I was there three 

 years ago I walked by the old house and the ground had a short 

 stubble on it; it must have been rye, and that is all that grew 

 there. 



We do not need to go to old countries to find land that 

 has been ruined. We do not want our country to get into such 

 shape as that where once in five years one million of people 

 must die off. Our only hope is that the dairy farmer will raise, 

 as Professor Newton says, one-sixth of all the food that is con- 

 sumed from milk and its products. 



