The Mena weekly star., 1913-10-09
Jobn b. aAage's
 Neeklp 9etter
Keen Our Cows at Home,

Much is written and said about the dairy COW, and to some the term may be confusing. The dairy COW we are interested in most is the plain, unpretentious old COW on the farm that furnishes milk and but ter for the family. She is a great friend to the women and children of this country, and her worth must not be underestimated. 1 have a special reason for discussing the COW right now. It will soon be time for the tick quarantine 10 be raised until next spring, and then cattle buyers will be going through the country and buying up the COWS to ship out to the cattle raisers ill the North and West. Remember that the old family COW is not only the dependence for milk and butter, but she is the mother of the calves, and without the cows we cannot have cattle in the future as we have ln the past.
 There are not more than one third as many COWS in circulation in Arkansas now as there were five years ago; all because shreWd cattle men of the North and West have been far-seeing enough to learn that the cattle supply was decreas- ing and the price increasing. Hun dreds of our farmers have sold off their cattle, including their cows, because they were offered a good price. Now when everybody knows the high prices of cattle on the market, many of our farmers who would raise cattle are going to find the supply of COWS so small that they cannot get started. So look out for the cows before it is too late. If the cattle raisers of other states can come into our midst, buy our COWS, pay the top price for them, pay the local buyer a profit, pay for driving them to town, then the freight on them for 800 miles, and take them to a country where they have to be kept in barns and pastures and fed six months or more in the year, and then use them for breeding purposes and make money out of the transaction, our own people can certainly well afford to keep them at home and make more money by refusing to sell.
 I was on the train between New York and Chicago one day last week, and met a farmer who lived 400 miles northwest of Chicago. He l told me he was coming to North Ar kansas in a month or two to buy a few carloads of hogs to ship to his farm and feed from his corn crop, and when fat 10 ship back to the Chicago market. I told him I hoped our people would know enough to keep their hogs. Too often they do not, however and it may be that this Iowa farmer will buy enough hogs in Arkansas to eat his crop of corn, and after having been ship ped over a thousand miles and fat tened, and then back to Chicago and Ibutchered, and after the lard and fat has been pressed out by hy- draulic pressure, the same hogs may be shipped back into Arkansas to be sold to the farmer who raised them, and who in the meantime has mOrtgaged his labor and is strug- gling to make enough cotton to pay it in the fall. Let us hope that nothing like this will be true. but It is not eXtFaVagant to say it will occur if the people do not stop sell ing off so closely their cattle and hogs and go to making their own meat at home. With the present prices of meat and butter and milk there is nothing raised on the farm that the farmer can afford to give in exchange for them without suf- fering a,loss in the exchange, when we calculate the cost of produc- tion. Think of these things.
 By all means keep the cows the calves and the hogs. You can bet ter afford to keep them than the fellow from the North can afford to buy. You certainly have the cost of transportation in your favor, so keep them,
 E John H. Page, Commissioner.