DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 81 



was an attendance of ninety-one. Our class rooms and laboratories are 

 too small to handle so large a class. It was necessary to divide it into 

 sections and to repeat the practical work. This made unexpected and 

 in fact, unreasonable demands upon the time of the teachers of stock 

 judging and of carpenter and blacksmith shop work. Before another 

 winter sets in larger class rooms will be available and much of this 

 repetition will be avoided. No changes have been made in the general 

 plan of the teaching in this special course. The day is very full begin- 

 ning at eight in the morning and the work continuing without interrup- 

 tion until five in the afternoon. 



It is significant of the industry of these young men, unaccustomed 

 to classroom and laboratory work, after the exhausting labor of a full 

 day elected to fill up the closing hour with military drill. They entered 

 into the spirit of the military work with intense enthusiasm. It was a 

 hard trial on their physical endurance to begin at eight in the morning 

 and close at six in the evening with one hour alone allowed for dinner. 



I am happy to report that the examinations at the close of the term 

 revealed very satisfactory progress indeed on the part of these students. 

 A very large minority of them were graduates of high schools. They 

 were therefore not ignorant of methods of study, though . somewhat un- 

 accustomed to devoting the whole day to this class of work. The very 

 satisfactory progress was therefore to be expected. 



The attendance upon the creamery course was smaller this year than 

 in some previous ones, the roster including but forty-one names. The 

 work proceeded along the usual lines, laying special emphasis on the 

 bacteriological side, including the making and carrying forward of 

 starters. Already nearly half of the creamery men in the state have been 

 pupils at this dairy school. Their success or failure, however, does not 

 hinge primarily on the knowledge received here but upon those per- 

 sonal characteristics of energy, persistence, thrift, cleanliness and busi- 

 ness sense, which are the universal foundation stones of a successful busi- 

 ness career. The school has sent out many a man well trained in the art 

 of butter making and not poorly educated in the science upon which that 

 art rests but who ignominiously fails because naturally dirty, slovenly 

 and negligent or because lacking in energy and push. The school dis- 

 claims all responsibility for these defects. 



Prof. F. O. Foster had charge of the practical work in butter making 

 and was most ably assisted by Mr. McFeeters of Owen Sound, Can., 

 whose ingenuity in developing methods of illustration combined with 

 his broad knowledge and wide experience made him invaluable in the 

 classroom and laboratory. A second assistant was Mr. Jay Pullen of 

 Leslie, Mich. He was a formed student of the school and understood 

 tlioroughly both our methods of teaching and the business of hantiling 

 cream and butter. 



The cheese course was conducted bv Prof, Foster, There were nine- 

 teen young men in that course. Most of them came from cheese factories 

 to which they returned at the conclusion of the course. They were 

 greatly benefited by the instruction in bacteriology and in milk testing 

 as well as by the work at the vat. 



No fundamental changes are suggested for the coming year. The 

 courses are now moving by the inertia of their past history. The 

 large number of young men, now approximately fourteen hundred which 

 11 



