15° AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



for agricultural experiment stations, and the total number of 

 stations established and supported by that fund makes the amount 

 of money something less than one million dollars a year. Think 

 of the amount of good that is done with this money ! We have 

 about fifty experiment stations (all of the states have one and 

 some more than one) partially supported by the government and 

 partially by the state or other sources. Just that small amount, 

 $15,000 a year to each one of those, furnishes an opportunity for 

 scientific men with the best of training to study the problems 

 that all of the people need to have studied, and cannot possibly 

 study themselves. The people have not the money or the facili- 

 ties for these experiments, but by making use of the experiments 

 of others they can earn a better living and make use of their own 

 resources. This illustration was given us a little while ago by 

 the professor from Cornell. Through their experiment station 

 they had obtained a large gift from the state, besides that of the 

 nation, all to be used for the same purpose, and they were enabled 

 to buy those poor cattle and prove something about them which 

 has been of immense value to all those who have heard about it. 

 Our government is thus, by its experiment stations, showing the 

 people how they may help themselves and become happy and 

 prosperous, thus making the nation stronger. No one comes 

 here and stays a day or two at this Dairy Conference, and sees 

 the exhibits of dairy products and machinery and goes away any 

 worse for it. Whether you are an exhibitor or only a spectator, 

 you cannot have wasted your time. If you have won a premium 

 you will not go away and make poorer butter, and if you have 

 not, you certainly will not go away and make poorer butter, 

 because you will want to get a premium the next time ; and if you 

 do not go away worse off you must go away better off. We 

 sometimes laugh at the illustration of the man who keeps cattle 

 to sell and pastures them, and sells the cattle to buy more land 

 to pasture more cattle to sell, to buy more land to pasture more 

 cattle to sell, etc. It is a circle that goes around and around, 

 and the advantage is that he is constantly getting more property. 

 We laugh at him because if that is all there is to his life the man 

 might as well die now ; but it probably is not all there is to him. 

 I want to apply that principle to this particular situation. This 

 State has appropriated S500 to hold this Dairy Conference. We 



