236 THU POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



handling and care of milk and cream, and of the cream and but- 

 ter in and out of the churn, are almost unknown to thousands 

 of butter-makers, and more especially to the private, non-pro- 

 fessional ones among these, who are in the great majority. The 

 engineers have their mechanical colleges and their schools of 

 technology, the doctors have their medical schools, and the drug- 

 gists their pharmacy colleges, but the dairy farmers have had 

 practically no place where they could receive instruction in the 

 theory and practice of butter and cheese making. I am aware 

 that there have been agricultural colleges in the United States 

 since 1855, but as far as practical instruction in dairying is con- 

 cerned a good many of them might as well not have existed at all, 

 if I do not radically misjudge the situation. Lectures in dairying, 

 in which the principles of butter-making were to be taught, were 

 certainly included in the curricula of some of the colleges, under 

 the charge of the Professor of Agriculture, but this gentleman 

 most likely also had charge of the feeding and breeding of farm 

 animals, cultivation of crops, soil physics, farm management, and 

 other studies. It is not strange that the attention given to dairy 

 matters and to the manufacture of dairy products could only be 

 very scant under these conditions. There were so many important 

 problems to be taken up and discussed in relation to general agri- 

 cultural topics that time would not permit entering into details, 

 even if the professor had the inclination to do so. 



This state of affairs led to the establishment of separate schools 

 for instruction in dairying, especially in the manufacture of but- 

 ter and cheese. Such schools have existed in Europe for a num- 

 ber of years ; here they were not introduced until four years ago, 

 when the Wisconsin Dairy School was founded as a separate de- 

 partment of the Agricultural College of the University of Wis- 

 consin. So spontaneous was the growth of this school, and so 

 rapid the adoption of the system in many other States of the 

 Union, that it surprised the most ardent supporters of the move- 

 ment. 



The Wisconsin Dairy School dates from January, 1890, when 

 a short dairy course was arranged for students taking the winter 

 course in the College of Agriculture ; two out of the twenty-seven 

 agricultural students took this dairy course. The following year, 

 when the course was greatly widened and the dairy school proper 

 organized, seventy-two students entered, crowding the quarters of 

 the school to the very utmost. The Wisconsin Legislature hav- 

 ing in 1891 appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars for a sepa- 

 rate dairy-school building, the work was at once pushed forward ; 

 where a crop of corn was taken off the ground in September, 1891, 

 a neat, substantial edifice was erected, the first story of which was 

 ready for occupancy in January, 1892, and in March the first class 



