No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 733 



and saying to those men: "You must conduct your factory according 

 to law; your factory is in an unsanitary condition. You have no 

 right to ask the patron to be clean in his milk if you are not and will 

 not be clean in the handling of it." Those men paid no sort of atten- 

 tion to this work. The inspector went there a second time, and they 

 laughed at him, and some of them threatened to drive him out of 

 the factory. Ignorance! Ignorance! There was a time when God 

 winked at ignorance, but He got tired of it. Ignorance! The con- 

 ceit of ignorance, the willfullness of ignorance, the danger of 

 ignorance. What result? Commissioner Emery proceeded to prose- 

 cute these 24 men for keeping their factories in an unsanitary con- 

 dition, and they were fined severely — from $25 to $50 apiece. Then 

 there was a waking up and a shaking of dry bones. Creamery men 

 have been prosecuted. Now, the law says in addition, that no farmer 

 shall bring milk to a cheese factory or creamery in an unsanitary 

 condition. And the law bears upon the milk producer as well as 

 the milk handler, and I want to say to you, gentlemen, that I never 

 saw 'such a quickening of the dairy sentiment of the State of Wiscon- 

 sin as has happened since the passage of these laws, and the begin- 

 ning of their installation. Now, this is an important thing, a very 

 important thing to all of us. 



Now, I say this about the inspection business, that one of the most 

 valuable things to-day is that it compels the farmer, stops him and 

 compels him to exercise his mind. He begins to say, "Well, what is 

 this thing that is going to happen to me?'' And you will find that 

 at the cheese factories and creameries, the patrons will come to- 

 gether; it provokes meetings among them. The creamery man, the 

 butter man is called on to explain to these people what this law is, 

 and there is a beginning to face, for the first time in their lives, the 

 actual real responsibility of their action before the law. That 

 is conducive to thought, and that compels men to study. I want to 

 say to you, gentlemen, we have never seen anything that has taken 

 hold of the mentality of Wisconsin, particularly the agricultural 

 classes, like the establishment of this system of inspection through- 

 out the state. Now, I believe, I know, that Pennsylvania is a great 

 dairy state, if it only knew it itself. In Pennsylvania you are like 

 a great rope of sand. You are not organized, you are not compact, 

 and you are not put in the shape where you can act and re-act on 

 one another. Wherever in the United States you find a state so 

 organized and so compact that its action and re-action, flection and 

 reflection, upon one another, in this state legislation has followed 

 and the state has been put upon advanced ground. You will find 

 in every instance that great financial prosperity has followed such 

 action. And if I were to appeal to you from no other consideration 

 than that of the most sordid character, the dollars and cents there 

 are in it, I would say, move upon your legislature under wise direc- 

 tion for the enactment of such laws, and for the creation of such 

 forces. 



MR. NORTON: What brought to my attention this matter in the 

 first place, was I found we had no way of making our patrons make 

 good milk. They would keep their cows dirty, and bring us dirty 

 milk. I got to thinking over the subject. I saw that this dairy in- 

 spection law in Michigan and Wisconsin was working well. I could 

 see no reason why our State should not have a similar law. As 



