COMMUNITIES DEPENDENT ON ANIMALS The Types of Communities.—Man's habits and customs depend largely on the kind of products or work from which people derive a living. One community may depend on plants, another on animals, a third on minerals, and a fourth on manufacturing. A much smaller number depend on commerce, while others are mainly interested in government, education, religion, art, science, or recreation. Each of these communities lives in its own peculiar way. A great city may combine many types of communities, but the manufacturing section cannot possibly be like the section around the university, or like the part where the truck farmers live in the suburbs. Not only are the habits of the people different, but also their minds and characters. The army tests during the Great War showed that doctors stand high in powers of observation, while engineers excel in the faculties that involve mathematics and exact measurements. If the mind that turns naturally to medicine is different from the one that turns to engineering, there must be similar differences in the minds of diverse communities such as cattle raisers and merchants. The business man needs to understand the ways of thinking of the communities with which he deals quite as much as their habits and occupations.
In the present chapter we shall discuss communities that depend on animals. Here, as in later chapters, it will be impossible to discuss all the types that depend on a given means of livelihood, and we shall take up only the most important, or those that illustrate great prin ciples. We shall begin with the most advanced.
A. The Dairying Community.—Natural Conditions that Lead to Dairying.—The use of animals dates back to the earliest known com munities, for man was a hunter long before he cultivated the soil. Even today, although plants are far more important than animals as sources of food and raw materials, animals still furnish products for which there are no substitutes. Dairying, because it uses each animal for the greatest number of purposes, is in the long run the most profitable way in which a country can use its cattle. The distribution of dairy ing depends upon geographical conditions. Thus the density of popu lation causes dairying to be more or less important near most large cities. Climatic conditions, however, have still more to do with the
industry. Dairying tends to thrive where the summers, though suffi ciently warm and rainy to produce abundant grass, are a little too cool for corn and too rainy for wheat. If such places have winters which are not too cold to prevent people from living healthfully and work ing comfortably, they are almost ideal for the production of a uni formly high quality of milk. If good transportation facilities can he developed, dairying is often the most profitable kind of farming for such a region. The climatic conditions which favor dairying are especi ally favorable to human health and to great activity, energy, and prog ress. Denmark, Wisconsin, New York, and New Zealand are excellent illustrations.
The Work of Dairying Communities.—In a dairy community some of the people are en gaged in raising barley, corn, turnips, mangel wurzels and hay for fodder; others tend the dairy cows and breed stock of high quality. Some work in labora tories to raise the but ter-fat standard and eliminate disease; while still o t her s follow chemist's recipes in making cheese and but ter, or employ the latest discoveries as to pasteurization and the preservation of vitamines in the preparation of condensed or dried milk. Some arc busy repairing all sorts of dairying and harvesting machinery, or are working to market the product, to preserve it in storage warehouses, or to transport it by truck, rail, or boat.
In addition to the direct work of dairying and of selling the main products, a dairy community engages in certain occupations arising out of by-products. The skimmed milk, together with corn in consin and barley and oil cake in Denmark, is used as food for fine bacon hogs. Some of the inhabitants in both Denmark and Wisconsin are engaged in another industry dependent on a by-product, namely, the disposal of the hides of the cattle that are killed for beef. The fact that Denmark makes many gloves, which are preferred above all others for heavy wear in Europe, is due in part to the dairying industry. In the same way the dairy farms near Milwaukee help that city to retain first rank in the tanning industry.