7S2 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



but becomes a helpless creature to his environment. Now, we found 

 hundreds of men running cheese factories and creameries in an un- 

 sanitary condition. We found ignorance defied, ignorance worship- 

 ped, rolled as a sweet morsel under the tongue, men worshipping 

 ignorance. Let me give you an example: In one county in Wiscon- 

 sin, occupied chiefly by Swiss people, ten million pounds of Swiss 

 cheese is produced. We could not get those Swiss people to have 

 any affiliation with our educational movement with our dairy as- 

 sociation, with our dairy conventions, with our farmers' institutes. 

 Like the average German everywhere throughout the world, they 

 were full of their own racial prejudice, and I am part German my- 

 self. These Swiss people were full of their own conceit, and nobody 

 on earth knew as much about making cheese as they. All at once 

 there broke out through that district a tremendous disaster. One 

 factory lost $3,000 worth of cheese, the cheese were bursting with 

 fermentation. As one old German said to me, "What you call the 

 devil, is to pay." "Yes," I says, "T guess so." For the first time 

 in their lives they saw they needed the help of science on this ques- 

 tion, and that their conceit did not help them a bit, and they ap- 

 pealed to the Wisconsin Association, and we sent an inspector to 

 examine the condition of things. And what did we find? In the reaf 

 of each factory was a row of barrels, sunken in the ground, and each 

 patron had a barrel, and every patron's whey was put into that 

 barrel, and that barrel had not been cleaned in years, and the patron 

 put that stinking rotten whey into the can that he brought his milk 

 to the factory in, and took it home, and then the housewife cleaned 

 and maybe she did not. Anyway, the milk came back to the factory 

 reeking with bacteria and fermentation and all things whatsoever 

 vile and unrighteous. And what was the result? Thousands upon 

 thousands of dollars lost to those people because of self-conceit and 

 ignorance. Now, then, we finally prevailed upon th®se people to 

 listen. Professor Bussell, our bacteriologist from the University, 

 was sent down, a very practical man, not only a scientist of the very 

 first water, but a constructive, practical man as well. And he went 

 down there, and he did what he could, and we sent the inspectors, 

 and the inspectors went around among these different creameries, 

 and these cheese factories, and commenced to teach that cleanliness 

 was among the first fruits of righteousness and good cheese making 

 The difficulty was cured. These men, for the first time in their lives, 

 saw how they had corrupted their own fortunes. That is one of the 

 things an inspection force was able to do. 



Now, then, we found that finally we worked up a sentiment in 

 Wisconsin to such an extent that we prevailed upon the legislature 

 last winter to give to the dairy and food commission an additional 

 force of eight inspectors, an additional chemist, so now the dairy and 

 food commission has a force of I think 14. Minnesota is ahead of us. 

 She spends about $30,000 a year in fostering and promoting the 

 dairy interests. Wisconsin will spend in the neighborhood of 

 twenty to twenty-five thousand. Wisconsin has been paying to its 

 own state dairymen's association, not an incorporated body, a body 

 which I may say I first organized myself in 1872, $2,000 a year for 

 doing educational work in the state. Now, then, we have got our 

 forces into shape. What have we done? We have prosecuted 24, 

 dirty, filthy cheese factory men after sending an inspector around 



