DAIRY MEETING. • 1 17 



Some reforms only touch the average citizen once in a hfe- 

 time, but the enforcement of honest weights and measures 

 touches every human being at every moment of the day." 



I hope, Gentlemen, that you will take a hand with Mr. Buck- 

 ley before your legislature and see that he is furnished with 

 sufficient funds to carry on this work. We are interested in 

 your weights and measures laws, and that is the reason I carne 

 here today. We have a selfish interest for Maine and New 

 Hampshire to wake up in this matter. Vermont has waked up, 

 and if Maine and New Hampshire will wake up and get things 

 in their states in better condition, you will help us and you will 

 help your own people. 



I asked a man who carries most of the butter that goes into 

 the Boston market from the State of Maine if he had any 

 trouble about weights. He said he had considerable trouble. 

 He got prints from Maine the other day and it took three half- 

 pound prints to make a pound. It may not have been the fault 

 of the Maine man; it may have been the fault of the scales. I 

 am connected with a club where we buy large quantities of 

 goods preserved down here in Maine, and I believe that firm 

 is honest but their scales had not been under the supervision of 

 a man who had sufficient test weights. You have standards here 

 in Maine but your Commissioner has told you that it was 20 

 years since they had been adjusted. Those standards should go 

 to Washington at least once in five years. T think our stand- 

 ards are sent oftener than that, — every two or three years, 

 because we use them a great deal. Every city in the State of 

 Massachusetts has been furnished with a set of standards 

 which is very exact, down to one-fifteenth of an ounce avoirdu- 

 pois. Those are sent into our office once every five years, 

 and we take them and adjust them. They are corrected once in 

 two or three years, but come to our office once in five years. 

 One man does the adjusting, and another man goes through 

 the same work, and he must make the weights agree so that 

 we know a 50 pound weight is within two grains of a correct 

 weight. Those are sent to the towns, and the sealer has a 

 duplicate set of those standards. He tests up his working weights 

 with the standard that we have furnished him and then he 

 goes out among the stores and adjusts all the weights he finds 



