12 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
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States in the year 1880, and that there had been an increase of 3,476,- 
805 milch cows in the last ten years, and an increase of 12,057,183 cat¬ 
tle ot all kinds in the same period. And the increase of milch cows in 
the ten Northwestern States has been 63 per cent. 
Now Ladies and Gentlemen, think of it. The glorious old cow, the 
pet of the family has increased in the Northwest in numbers to the 
amount of 63 per cent in ten years, and the amount of her butter has 
increased 63 per cent or more and the price of her butter and cheese 
has increased 50 per cent, in the Northwest. And the increase of all 
kind of stock, the production of the cow is 100 per cent, making a to¬ 
tal ol 276 per cent, and I may add, there is millions more in it. The 
grand old cow has lifted more mortgages, and paid for more farms, 
from Maine to Oregon, than any one other production ever produced. 
Ladies and gentlemen, I could enumerate innumerable' amounts, 
wherein the cow is the producer and the king of production. 
She is the mother of all of our beef. The improver of infant pigs, 
and furnishes milk for many infants of the genus homo. And it re¬ 
quires her production to make Oleomargerine. I refrain from enum¬ 
erating statistics of butter, cheese, condensed milk, sugar of milk, and 
a hundred culinary purposes which milk makes the cream of living. 
Now I do want to say, that the cow has turned the tide of our agri¬ 
cultural prosperity, here in Northern Illinois, and many other places, 
from a downward course in raising grain, to an upward and prosper¬ 
ous one in raising stock, grass and hay. It has been said long ago, 
that the man who made two blades of grass grow in the place of one, 
was a benefactor to his race. Now any man that will raise the cow 
intelligently and continue therein any reasonable length of time, will be 
that benefactor. 
There is millions more in the cow, of which men of larger caliber 
than myself, will tell you, before you leave this convention, when they 
give you statistics about the Shorthorns, Herefords, Ay reshire, Jer¬ 
seys, Holstiens, Devons and possibly the coming cow may come 
from Iceland or Alaska. Since writing the above, report sa}^ Jhat 
Obadiah’s son John, or one of his younger sons was one of the Editors 
of the Chicago Tribune and had forgotten about the pet cow of the 
family, and wrote the following editorial a few weeks ago, which to 
me looks like a man up a tree. 
THE BUTTER QUESTION. 
The speculators in butter allege the drouth of the late summer and 
early iall as a reason for keeping up the excessive price of their pro¬ 
ducts. But this is a mere pretext. The drouth was followed by a 
long season of abundant rains. The pastures were again covered 
with a growth of the richest verdure, and outdoor feeding has already 
continued on the average five weeks longer than in the season of 1880. 
The second crop of hay was in many localities better than the first, 
which was a heavy one, and the price is now tumbling under the in¬ 
fluence of the late supplies. The fact is, that the price of butter has 
been run up and kept up in sympathy with the price of grain, though 
there is no reason for it based on short supplies. The buttermakers 
and dealers have been bitten with the mania tor speculation just as the 
