76 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



Experiment Station began to look into the matter of dairying, 

 but the cows that they had were only producing 120 pounds of 

 butter fat a year, consequently it was not possible to produce but- 

 ter at a profit, then they began to improve these animals until 

 today they are producing 240 pounds of butterfat a year. Out 

 of herds numbering 81,000 cows they have an average annual 

 production in one district of 278 pounds of butter fat per cow. 



Let us now follow this little country up to the present time. 

 For the past twenty years that country has imported grain and 

 corn from this country, so you are widely interested in Den- 

 mark for that reason. A good deal of the corn produced in Il- 

 linois is shipped across and sold to Denmark and they are pro- 

 ducing butter from your Illinois corn. You will probably be in- 

 terested in knowing that in 19 13 Denmark imported corn large- 

 ly from the United States tO' the amount of fifty-one and a half 

 million dollars. Do you realize that the value of the Illinois 

 corn crop the same year was one hundred seventy-eight million 

 dollars? Denmark is only one-fifth the size of Illinois but it 

 will annually import more corn than is grown on one-fifth of 

 Illinois' soil. Statistics furthermore show that the fertiHty of 

 the Danish soil has gradually increased during the past twenty 

 years and showed in the year 191 3 a gain of 53.2 per cent above 

 what it was twenty years ago. 



When you come back, as I notice you gradually do, to milk- 

 ing cows you want to ask your father if the same is true in ref- 

 erence to his farm. Has that land increased in fertility 53.2 per 

 cent as is the case in Denmark ? He knows, he will be able to ans- 

 wer that question I will not. 



What influence has that had in reference to the accumu- 

 lation of wealth? I may state when I was a boy in 1880, they 

 had a depleted soil, practically worth nothing for farming. In 

 1896 they had started a good business with the other countries 

 and the amount of money which they at that time received for 

 agricultural products exported in excess of the amount they 

 paid out for agricultural products imported was $28,000,000 a 

 year; that means that among those two or three million people 

 they had $28,000,000 outside money to distribute. In 19 13 this 



