72 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
but we must guard against false economy. It is not economy to lure 
a scalawag man, any more than it is to buy a scalawag cow ; we must 
carefully avoid both. It is not economy to keep but one man, when 
you have work for two. Pay good men fair wages, as the times go, 
and employ enough help to do your work in a thorough and season¬ 
able manner. With brains at the helm, I am convinced that the 
more men employed, the more money made. Let us get out of our 
farms and our cows all that is in them. Let us raise no weeds, keep 
no dead-heads, and we will succceed in spite of low prices. 
It is important for us also to consider that everything 
which tends to a better system of farming, to an increased yield per 
acre from unplowed meadow and pasture lands, to better drainage, to 
better care and application of manures, better care of tools, better 
fences, more thorough eradication of weeds the curse of the agri¬ 
culturalist; in a word, everything that tends to thrift, economy, 
enterprise and progress, will cheapen the production of milk, directly 
or indirectly. 
As I have said before, I am not sanguine that with our best 
endeavors we can keep pace with the depreciation in price of our 
products, but this very depreciation may be profitable to us in 
another way. 
If the efforts that we are obliged to make to stem the tide of 
bad fortune should make us better farmers than we were before, bet¬ 
ter men than we were before ; if it should cause a renewal in us of the 
old-fashioned virtues of honesty, economy and industry ; if it should 
cause us to adopt the golden rule, “ Pay as you go,” if it should com¬ 
pel us to do without superfluities and luxuries until able to pay for 
them, then might we truly exclaim with the “ Bard of Avon 
“Sweet are the uses of adversity, 
That like a toad, ugly and venomous, 
Bears yet a precious jewel in its head. 
* 
Thos. Bishop : Asked if there were not many ways 
of furnishing milk. Some used a small patch of ground, 
bought all their feed and made a large quantity of milk, 
while some used large farms and produced no more. Which 
was the better plan ? Who could give the exact figures ? 
He would like to know which was the cheapest. He could 
keep one cow on five acres ; no less. Some claimed to 
