172 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



creamery in the world, and yet I feel that in your own state the 

 business is in its infancy. 



Thirtieth anniversary, thirty years is a good long time, it 

 is almost an ordinary lifetime. It's nearly a generation. It 

 carries a man to a point of life where he should be competent to 

 act on his own judgment, and it certainly puts a lady on the old 

 maid's list. During a period of 30 years, thousands of people 

 get out of the race. During the past 30 years many Dairy Asso- 

 ciations have died, and yet, with all of this history to the con- 

 trary notwithstanding, your society is a strong, healthy, active 

 and useful organization, and to its parents I would say tonight, 

 you have reason to feel grateful for its existence and preserva- 

 tion as well as for the useful life it has had. I trust it would not 

 be regarded as presumption for me to say to you that every drop 

 of blood in its veins is of the purest character, and with each 

 pulsation that sends it alternately to the heart and back again 

 to the surface, it touches first a tender spot. The very soul of 

 an industry that stands prominent and over which the special 

 favor of an all- wise Creator seems to have ever been extended, 

 and next, as it goes coursing through the system towards the 

 surface, it is protected by a thin and sensitive skin. It's sensi- 

 tive, it's delicate, it's flexible, it's susceptible, it's composed of 

 sensitive people who deal with sensitive animals, who produce a 

 delicate product. Keep around it your sustaining arm, give it 

 your earnest and continuous support, supply it with the most 

 wholesome and delicate food, provide it always with a com- 

 fortable and desirable abiding place, and, above everything, see 

 that the air it breathes is pure, that the atmosphere in which it 

 lives is uncontaminated, and you will live to see it grow larger 

 and stronger and more useful. It will always be a power for good 

 in the land of superior men, and you will be instrumental in 

 making more popular than ever, this, the most profitable branch 

 of the most dignified business in which man ever engaged. Did 

 you ever stop to think that the first farmer was Adam ? Did you 

 ever think that when God Almighty Himself made this wonder- 

 ful world, when He created this wonderful habitation of ours, 



