HOW CAN WE COMPETE WITH THE WEST IN DAIRYING. 57 



lein, and under the other, that now under consideration, to place 

 the emphasis upon the educational side. The remainder of my 

 appeal will not be addressed directly to the pocketbook, but to 

 the brain. Under this heading I want to consider 



(a.) Dairy education. 



(b.) The use of the Babcock test on the farm. 



(c.) Dairy sanitation. 



(a.) Dairy education. With dairy papers, dairy institutes, 

 dairymen's associations, dairy schools, dairy bulletins, state and 

 national, with dairy information and education on tap for the 

 asking, all free and most of it reliable and worth having, it 

 does seem as if there was little need for ignorance touching the 

 better methods of dairy husbandry. Yet, if one may judge by 

 conditions as found, there is still lamentable lack of information 

 on every hand regarding the essentials of modern dairy practice. 

 Many dairymen have made great advance along this line, but 

 hosts still stand aloof, and by their actions proclaim that igno- 

 rance is bliss. There is still need of missionary work. The 

 great difficulty, however, is how to get at those who will not 

 help themselves, who refuse to read, who will not grade up 

 milk or product, who decline to inquire, who are wedded to 

 their idols, whose sluggishness and indifference affect primarily 

 their own welfare, and secondarily injure that of their neigh- 

 bor and associates in business. Narrow minded, prejudiced, 

 carping, dissatisfied, suspicious, behind the times, they will not 

 see the light even though it be flashed in their very faces. It 

 is this class of men who growl at the tariff, who complain that 

 dairying don't pay, who think the creamery proprietor a thief, 

 the Babcock test a fraud, to whom it never occurs that the fault 

 lies in their own inability or unwillingness to study their calling 

 and to apply business principles to their work. No sense of their 

 personal responsibility for their ill success appears to oppress 

 them. Instead of seeking to imitate their prosperous neighbor, 

 successful because of the application of modern ideas in dairy- 

 ing, they too often are angry with and jealous of him. They 

 will not see that just as success in other lines of business de- 

 mands study and application of new economic ideas, dairying, 

 to be profitable, must be studied. 



I was amused at correspondence published some months 

 ago in a prominent dairy paper. The writer urged the editor to 

 "letup on those shiftless farmers who haven't intelligence 

 enough to read such a paper nor energy enough to profit by it if 

 they did read it. Publish a paper for intelligent men and let 

 the stupids go." In response to the editor's query whether he 

 ought to stop trying to reach these farmers who refuse to make 

 of themselves intelligent dairymen, he replied that the paper's 



