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

528 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
farmer, and make all these other things subordinate to the
farm; or, are you going to disown your farm and your
business and your community and run everything for the
sake of magnifying that which is really a side-issue of your
business, your dairy stock, your dairy herd, or your dairy
breeding business?
That is the question that we must face.
It is so crucial
that one's conception of the relation of his farm to his herd,
or his herd to his farm, will determine whether he is
to be a success in his business.
going
Let us not forget that one
thing. This country is made up of individuals of whom
you are members and representatives, and this country is
hanging in the balance agriculturally. We think we are
the greatest. We have overshot ourselves in the respect
of immediate production and we are not keeping up the
fertility of our land, and the result of this is that our relatively
high agricultural supremacy is going down. And
it is going to continue to go down, unless we get busy. That
means that every man must regard his farm as primary,
and if he has a herd of great cattle, he must regard this herd
as secondary. If this herd is not secondary and is not made
to serve the purpose of the building up of his farm and his
agriculture, he is not only failing for himself, but also for
his offspring. That is the way I look at it.
There is one other aspect of this purebred business that
I want to warn you about, and that is with regard to the
speculative point of view.
A man goes out to look around
for a sire forhis herd and he says he wants such and such a sire.
Now, one man will say that he wants a bull that is going to
a great herd of dairy cows.
build up his herd and make it
That man is safe. The next man will say that he wants a
bull, no matter how old or how young he is,
that is so conspicuous
and so well advertised that his offspring will
for very high prices, and he is willing to pay out a large
price for that bull, whether he is any good or not. That
man is unsafe. The first man is a breeder. The second
sell