36 ILLINOIS dairymen's association. 



that covers the help in the house, and when he has sixty cows he has six hired 

 nelp about his farm. I think that might be considered very fair. 



The Chairman: Can you not figure that down for us ? If a man takes care 

 of the cows and does all of the work, how much butter will that produce ? 



Prof. Henry : You can do that better than I can. 



Mr. Johnson : If there is anything that recommends that institution in 

 Wisconsin for me, it is that Professor Henry comes here without figures. I'm 

 afraid of the man that figures too much. 



Mr. Buell : It seems to me that it is not fair for us farmers to ask Pro- 

 fessor Henry, who is engaged in experiments of a scientific character like this, 

 to go any further than he has gone. It is for us to figure how much it will cost 

 to raise and manage forty or eighty cows, and it is for him to give us just such 

 figures as he has given, as the result of his scientific experimental work. We 

 should make the applications ourselves. I wish that there were men — more 

 men among us farmers, who could tell us just what it costs to manage a dairy of 

 forty cows. I do not believe it requires one man for every ten cows, but then, I 

 do not know that I am getting the best results. Right there is a question, how 

 much work it pays to put on a cow ? Possibly Mr. Hiram Smith is carding his 

 cows — taking better care of them than I do, but possibly he is not making as 

 much margin. 



Mr. Allen : My experience is about like this, that if a man is going to 

 produce a pound of butter for fifteen cents, he has got to have his boys and his 

 wife and his children around him to work for nothing. When I first began in 

 the dairy business I had my boys and my family around me, and we got 15, 16 

 and 17 cents, and we thought we did pretty well, but the boys have grown up 

 and gone away and I now have to have all my work done. I make what some 

 people call first-class butter, 'and I get a big price. I have a herd of some thirty- 

 five Jersey cows, but I have to hire all my help and it makes it so expensive 

 that I am sure a man cannot make a pound of first-class butter, and get a profit on 

 it, unless he gets at least 25 cents. You can not feed a cow nothing but hay, and 

 make first-class butter, and that makes it expensive. 



Mr. Johnson : I will venture this assertion, that if any of your neighbors 

 want to borrow money, they don't come into Belvidere to borrow it. 



Mr. Allen : I assure you they would not get any money of me that I have 

 made this last year. I do not believe that a man can run over ten cows to a man, 

 but then there is a great deal of difference, I find, in the way different men 

 handle labor on a farm — some can get more labor out of hands than others. 



MR. Johnson : I think there is a fallacy in the way dairy farmers reason. 

 They will hire a man for $25 a month, and set him to work about two and a 

 half or three hours a day, and have him do something else the rest of the time, 

 and charge the whole time up to the dairy, and then conclude that they cannot 

 make butter for less than 25 cents. 



Mr. Hostetter : I have kept account ever since I have been farming, of 

 everything that I spent and everything that came in, and I cannot make as 

 much money at any business as I can at farming. You keep an account of 

 everything — everything you use in the house, fuel, etc., etc., and a farm that 

 is not bringing in $1,000 a year for living for a man, isn't doing very well — a 

 farm of 160 acres. I want to ask some of these gentlemen what they think 



