35 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Much honor is due to the various breeders' associations that have 

 labored long and earnestly to induce the ordinary dairyman to become bet- 

 ter acquainted with the cow machine, to find out what she is capable of 

 doing, and instead of being contented with the ordinary common stock 

 )f the country, inducing them to improve the quality, so that in a 25 cow 

 ■*dairy now the cows may be made to average 300 pounds of butter per year 

 instead of 100, with no greater expenditure of care and feed than for- 

 merly applied to the 25 cow dairy that only produced 100' poundsi per year 

 each. 



With all this evolution in all the various channels we have touched 

 upon, the dairymen themselves evoluted to the extent that they ought oi? 

 that they might? That isi the problem for you people to solve; that is 

 one of the reasons why this dairy association was organized, because 

 improvement of stock, methods- and appliances are worth but Hi ttle unless 

 improved dairymen handle them and go with them. Are the dairymen ot 

 this district, of the whole country, as thorough, as capable of handling 

 the dairy industry with the present improved methods and scieitific ap- 

 pliances as were the dairymen of 50 years back in doing the work with the 

 knowledge and appliances then available? We believe they are. We 

 believe ithat the dairymen today, on the average, are superior to the dairy- 

 men of 50 years ago, because progress and evolution must be and is a 

 portion of all who come in contact with advancement in any particular 

 line in which they may be engaged. But how many of the dairymen in 

 this audience, the men who hand le cows and furnish milk to the cream- 

 ery, cheese factory, condensing factory, or for any other purpose, can say 

 that their cows average them 500 pounds of milk per year. We fear that 

 but few of them know whether they do or whether they do not. And it 

 so, it is their fault and not the fault of the dairy industry that they ar^ 

 not averaging more than 50f0 pounds. 



This information that is to be had along better lines of dairying by- 

 means of dairy literature through dairy papers, agricultural papers, bulle- 

 tins of the agricultural colleges, and experiment stations, through the 

 bulletins furnished by the agricultural department along those special 



