The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-10-06
DAIRY CONDITIONS BRING
SUCCESS TO IOWA COUNTY
None of Its Twenty-Six Banks
Have Ever Failed.

Clayton county, Iowa, dairying
county, attributes its remarkable bank
record of never having a single one
of its twenty-six banks to fail, to the
dairy COW and dairying, according to
an article appearing in the October
issue of The Dairy Farmer and writ
ten by Florence L. Clark, Iowa. Fol-
lowing is the article:
Why has Clayton county, Iowa,
come through the epidemic of bank
failures without a single one of its 26
banks closing its doors? This is a
distinction that no other county in the
state seems to be claiming.
The question has been put to sew
eral of the leading bankers of the
county, and their answer in the main
has been the same. They varied some
what on minor reasons, but the two
things that all stressed were that it
has always been a dairy county and
that the land boom of several years
ago affected it very little. The cream
checks came in all thru the critical
times and the farmers had money as
a consequence to meet their obliga-
tions. The size of the cream checks
mounted steadily the past few years.
There is reason for that, too, the
bankers and creamery officials say,
and that is the expansion of cow test
ing in the county.
There are now ten cow testing asso-
Citations at work in the county, the
largest number it il .-aImed of any
one county in the United States.
Wedding, feeding and breeding has
been going on rapidly. The result is
that in a drive over any country road
in Clayton county now, herds of Hol-
stems, Jerseys and Guernseys are
seen dotting the landscape all along
the way.
Dairy herds of John Geraghty and
Sons and Meder Brothers, five years
in eight, have been awarded the Kill
dee cup given annually for the larg-
est average butterfat production in
Iowa. The purebred Holstein herd Of
Clair F. Limbeck, Of Clayton county,
made the highest butterfat produc-
ton of any dairy herd in Iowa the
past year. For the month of May
this year it had the highest record of
any herd under test in the State, and
the Guernseys of j. A. Fritz, another
Clayton county farmer, ranked second.
In 1926 the county led all others in
the State in production of creamery
butter with an output of 5,4S3,S 1858
pounds. The Strawberry Point whole
milk creamery is the largest whole
milk creamery in the world. Three
times in four years it and another
Clayton county creamery at Volga
have won the gold medal on butter
in national contests.
This summer, Gertrude Kaiser,
Lloyd Kaiser and Kenneth Walter,
Clayton county young people, were in
London, England, representing the
United States in the international
boys and girls dairy cattle judging
contest at the Royal Livestock Expo
sition. They were state champions at
the Dairy Cattle Congress in Waterloo
in 1926 and at the National Dairy
Show in Detroit in October. The Iowa
legislature appropriated $4,000 for
their expenses.
Clayton county has no town with
population of over 1900. Its banks
have many farmer directors. In Gar
navillo, Iowa, six miles off the rail-
road, and with $40 population, there
are two banks with combined deposits
of over two million and quarter. The
stock in these banks is about rs per
cent farmer owned.
People of Clayton county are proud
of their banks and their no failure
record, but are more impressed with
the evidence that is forthcoming of
the value to the farmer of dairying as
means of stabilizing the farm bust
ness and an insurance against hard
times.