DAIRY MEETING. 1 75 



barns, creameries and other appliances, puts dairying into the 

 verv front rank. 



A second reason for the importance of dairying is its univer- 

 saHty. It would require a stretch of imagination for one of 

 your dairymen here in Maine, with the ground covered with 

 snow, to hail a cotton planter of the South as a ''brother farmer," 

 or to grasp the hand of the wheat grower of the West as a 

 "brother farmer." But dairying is pretty much the same every- 

 where, and is practiced in every State of the Union. The Maine 

 dairyman could drop into a dairy convention in Ohio, Texas, 

 Florida, or California, and discuss intelligently with the men 

 there such problems as the nutritive ratio, commercial starters, 

 the Babcock test, and pasteurization. He would feel perfectly 

 at home, and that the fraternity of common practices, troubles 

 and investigations knits together the dairymen of the whole 

 nation. 



A third reason why dairying is very important is that it calls 

 for more skill than any other agricultural specialty. Dr. True, 

 in a recent lecture in New Hampshire, subdivided agriculture 

 for the purpose of a scientific course of study in our colleges into 

 five departments — crop production, animal production, the con- 

 version of raw materials, rural engineering and rural economics, 

 ^lany farmers get along with a knowledge of only one or two 

 of these branches. The dairyman, however, must know some- 

 thing of all. He must know something about animal production 

 in order to have the best cows. He must know something about 

 crop production in order to raise the crops to feed those cows. 

 He must know something about the conversion of raw material 

 in manufacturing butter or cheese from milk or cream. He 

 must know something about rural engineering and the questions 

 that pertain to ventilation, sewerage, irrigation, location of build- 

 ings, and the planning of the creamery, the barn or the dairy 

 room. And last of all he must know something about econom- 

 ics in order to sell to the best advantage. So that dairying 

 includes a knowledge of something of all the five subdivisions 

 of agriculture, and therefore calls for more skill than other spe- 

 cialties that require a knowledge of only one, two or three of 

 them. 



If dairying is so important by reason of its universality, of the 

 skill required and of its importance statistically, we may reason- 



