Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

486 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
IT
Delivered before the Eighteenth Annual Conference of Agricultural
Extension Workers, Purdue University, LaFayette, Ind., November
22,
I9I4.
PROBLEMS OF THE DAIRY INDUSTRY
is a very great pleasure and privilege for me to be
here to-day. I almost hesitate to follow the logic
of Professor Hunziker and the enthusiasm of Professor
Christie, for fear of spoiling it, but the situation
needs, more than anything else, inspiration, and inspiration
is made up of ideals, imagination, and energy, and
these have been presented to you to-day in these talks in
such a way as almost to make it desirable that you shall
go away and think about what' has been said to you
without further comment.
already,
I have not been given any special subject to-day. I
was told to say what I wanted to say. It is a very dangerous
thing to have said that, for there is so much I want to
say. I probably have taken my professional life in my
hands in coming here, as I frequently do. I have depended
on the fact that I am a doctor, for a livelihood.. I have had
friends that were frank enough to say that that was probably
the reason I was a farmer on such a scale, because I
was a doctor. Be that as it may, when I registered with
the young lady to-day who gave me the card, I wrote down,
"Occupation — Physician. Chief Interest— Agriculture."
How is that going to sound in my practice? I do not see
that there is anything to do but face it. Perhaps I am
excusable because I am a pretty old man in the practice
of medicine, and perhaps it is time that I should get out.
The fact remains, however, that my chief interest, as
far as human interest lies, is in agriculture. That is why
I am a dairyman, because I see, or think I see that the future
of
agriculture, which means the future of this people, is to
a very great extent bound up in the subject of dairying.