DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 415 



many men out of employment that I presume it affects the 

 milking machine business." When the machines first came 

 in, scarcity of help was a factor in creating a demand, but today 

 the price of cows has risen a great deal in Brighton market, 

 so that cows are worth twice what they were seven years ago, 

 and the result of that has been that the dairymen have felt it 

 is not a question of getting any person to milk, but of getting a 

 competent person. In other words, it is not a question of getting 

 any kind of labor, but particular kinds of labor. We still have 

 trouble in getting sufficient hand labor to take care of cows, 

 but I think a still greater difficulty has been to get the quality 

 of men that we desire for hand milkers. Any dairyman who 

 has had any experience with cows knows the difference between 

 the record of a cow in a good milker's hands and in a poor 

 milker's hands. And so if milking machines would milk cowj 

 successfully, if there was no other advantage they would be 

 preferable to hand milking because one man can milk about 

 three times as many cows with a machine as he can by hand. 



And then there is this other feature — that the milking machine 

 in the hands of a good man will discount unfavorable condi- 

 tions. It has been shown, in isolated cases, that remarkably 

 fine milk can be produced in very poor quarters. A year ago, 

 in the competition for milk at the meeting of the Massachusetts 

 Dairy Association, the man who got $200 in cash prizes for 

 clean milk was a man whose equipment was deplorable. He 

 went against every tenet of good dairying. His barn was a 

 picture of "How not to do it." And yet by extreme care he 

 was able to produce good milk. And so I say that the milking 

 machines sometimes discount unfavorable conditions, in the 

 hands of a good man, if they are kept clean. The milk passes 

 directly from the cow and the outside conditions are less effect- 

 ive. 



The next question is, What will milking machines do? Upon 

 that question there is a very wide difference of opinion. If 

 you should look at the circular advertising the first milking 

 machine that was put out, ten years ago, you would find that 

 it said that one man could milk 35 cows an hour, and it named 

 a man who had been successful with 45. That was not with 

 anv desire to distort the situation. It was the belief that this 

 could be done. Now we have come down to what we think 



