ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
II 
immediately, if not sooner, a little offspring, a little king or queen upon 
the throne, puts in its appearance, with more demands than Susan 
Jane and Obadiah are prepared to pay. 
And as a rule there is more to follow, as time rolls briefly along, 
and soon Obadiah writes home to father, or Susan Jane to mother 
and says something like this: ' That they had a little piece of land 
cleared, a little log house, and a little log barn and enough to feed the 
old gray horse, and a little to spare. And as Johnny was getting to be 
a big, nice, fat baby, and if father could just help them to get a nice 
cow of John Jones that lived down in the settlement, they would be 
perfectly happy in their new home. Jones would sell them the cow 
for thirteen dollars and a half. A very nice cow with very long 
horns and quite tall, with short bushy tail, and Jones says we can have 
the calf too. And now if father could let us have ten dollars, a year 
or two, so that they could buy her it would be so nice for baby, (to 
have some nice warm milk,) Jones will take five cord of wood for the 
other three dollars and a half and Obadiah says he can get that out 
soon. 
Now picture to yourselves what father and mother would say on 
receipt of this letter. Obadiah had been a good boy, and had helped 
clear up the farm, and Susan Jane had been good to wash dishes, and 
tend the baby and mother says she will sell this jar of butter and box 
of eggs when she goes down to Bangor and father would have a lit¬ 
tle left out of the sale of that pig, after paying his taxes, and Obadiah 
would buy his first cow. 
Now ladies, and gentlemen, picture to your self this little story of 
getting the first cow in a thousand different ways; by the tens of thou¬ 
sands of men and women and think of the manv millions of moral 
worth that there has been in it. There is many a man and woman in 
this house I have no doubt, but what has seen a thousand times better 
picture in their experience of life than I have drawn. And Obadiah’s 
cow and calf have grown and increased from a thirteen dollar cow, 
and eight cent butter, to a fifty dollar cow and forty cent butter, and I 
believe lives way out west near Dundee Illinois, and belongs to a 
board of trade at a place they call Elgin. And many of these Obadi- 
ahs have their hundreds of cows on the thousand hills round about. 
And then came a period that corn was called King, and a very fair 
King it made too. With its millions of value, it did not teach those 
lessons of thrift, economy, and increase, that the cow and her progeny 
bring to the mass of the human family. A very short time ago 
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated paper undertook to prove that grass was 
King; and when you figure the many uses, and ways that it can be 
used, and in a financial view there is millions in it, and a very form¬ 
idable King it makes. 
These statistics are a valuable document for study, but would be to 
long to detail here on this occasion, as I wish to detail to you a very 
few statistics on the value of the cow and her productions in a com¬ 
mercial way. 
The Hon. George B. Loring, United States Commissioner of Agri¬ 
culture, stated at the National Butter, Cheese and Egg Convention at 
Cedar Rapids, that there were 12,412,137 milch cows in the United 
