"I have purchased twenty three-year-old Holstein cows, in calf to advanced registry bulls, and they are to be delivered to me March 10. I shall want you to go and fetch them. I also bought a young bull from the same herd, but not from the same breeding. These twenty-one animals will cost, by the time they get here, $2200. I shall give the bull to my neighbor Jackson. He will be proud to have it, and I shall be relieved of the care of it. Be good to your neighbor, Thompson, if by so doing you can increase the effectiveness of the factory farm. We will start the dairy with twenty thoroughbreds and six scrubs. I shall probably buy and sell from time to time; but of one thing I am certain: if a cow cannot make our standard, she goes to the butcher, be she mongrel or thoroughbred. What do you think of Judson as a probable dairyman?" "I shouldn't wonder if he would do first-rate. He's a quiet fellow, and cows like that. He has those roans tagging him all over the place; and if a horse likes a man, it's because he's nice and quiet in his ways. I notice that he can milk a cow quicker than the other men, and it ain't because he don't milk dry--I sneaked after him twice. The cow just gives down for him better than for the others." CHAPTER XXI THE RAZORBACK We have now launched three of the four principal industries of our factory farm. The fourth is perhaps the most important of all, if a single member of a group of mutually dependent industries can have this distinction. There is no question that the farmer's best friend is the hog. He will do more for him and ask less of him than any other animal. All he asks is to be born. That is enough for this non-ruminant quadruped, who can find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or the forest, and who, out of a supply of grass, roots, or mast, can furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's maintenance. The half-wild razorback, with never a clutch of corn to his back, gives abundant food to the mountaineer over whose forest he ranges. The cropped or slit ear is the only evidence of human care or human ownership. He lives the life of a wild beast, and in the autumn he dies the death of a wild beast; while his flesh, made rich with juices of acorns, beechnuts, and other sweet masts, nourishes a man whose only exercise of ownership is slaughter. The hog that can make his own living, run like a deer, and drink out of a jug, has done more for the pioneer and the backwoodsman than any other animal.