390 AGRICULTURE OP MAINE. 



very good farmer, and not a very good dairyman, lie was a 

 milkman and fed his cows bran and gluten and if he wanted to 

 make a change he fed gluten and bran, year after year. I 

 worked with him a long time and got him to join the dairy 

 association, and now he is one of the best dairymen and one of 

 the best farmers on a small scale in the State of Maine, because 

 of three years of this kind of tutoring, that we get by the demon- 

 stration work and also by the cow test work and the lectures 

 that we get at those meetings. You know that this is the best 

 thing in the world for dairymen, and I am not going to tell you 

 anything more about it. Some of you may be called to organize 

 a dairy testing association and you say, "Oh, we cannot do it !" 

 Of course you cannot ; no man who says that can. We met in 

 Waterville, a few of us, and organized and elected the speaker 

 as president, and R. O. Jones of pure bred Jersey fame as 

 treasurer. Prof. R. W. Redman was with us and he came to 

 our meetings for two or three months. We subscribed 159 

 cows at $1.50 apiece and that would not pay the bills for the 

 year, and so we got together and I asked the members what 

 they were going to do about it. They discussed the matter 

 and said, "We would like to do it but we cannot because we 

 haven't money enough and don't see where it is coming from." 

 Prof. Redman said he was sorry the meeting was taking that 

 course as he thought the best thing for them to do was to form 

 an association. Then it came the president's turn, and I said 

 to them, "Gentlemen, the way to do a thing is to do it, and to 

 begin to do it now. There is one thing we can do. We have 

 159 cows pledged, and if we are willing to pay for 159 cows at 

 $1.50, whether we have the whole year's work or not, we can 

 start in, and when we have to leave oft" we will, but we will not 

 before." 



They agreed to this and we sent for a man and have kept up 

 the work three years last May and have paid our bills. We 

 have a man who is working hard for us. We sometimes lose a 

 herd, because we have members that do not learn one single 

 thing. One man whom I have in mind was a member of the 

 association for a whole year and when he got through he did 

 not feed his cows any better than he did before. He dropped 

 out, of course. What was the use of staying in? He could not 

 learn how to feed cows and he would not feed them if he knew 



