No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 393 



sition at St. Louis, Minnesota twice out of three times won the high- 

 est prize for the best tub of batter. It had the highest average of 

 any state's exhibit of butter there, and you known how hard it is to 

 get a high average on a hirge number of entries. How did they get 

 that average? Minnesota keeps a dozen or more skilled butter- 

 makers traveling among her creameries helping their operators to 

 overcome the fault in their bui.ter, and their exhibits at St. Louis 

 Vkith the long string of prizes showed the wisdom of this. 



Canada has largely taken from the United States our foreign mar- 

 ket for butter and cheese. That is for two reasons: We created i* 

 prejudice against our products by adulteration. Then Canada went 

 out to supply the market. They have over thirty traveling instruc- 

 tors at work helping their factories make the kind of product tht 

 markets want. But the United States is waking up. Traveling 

 instructors are at work in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, 

 Indiana, and to a slight extent in Ohio and New York; they art- 

 giving these instructions right where the men are who are doing 

 the work. 



Another thing is the special trains that have been run through the 

 west, and later on in New England, where they stop at the different 

 stations twenty minutes and have men on the train selected for the 

 purpose, to give lectures. The train is well advertised ahead, and 

 is on time so that the farmers who gather to see the demonstration 

 and hear the lecture lose no time waiting. Many come, hear and 

 are prompted to action who never go to the farmers institute. These 

 trains do a lot of good work. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which 

 most people think is not inclined to do anything for farmers, has 

 made arrangements to run a special train of this kind over every mile 

 of their road in the State of Indiana. 



Then there is another educational feature — excursions to the 

 college. Ontario was, I think, the first to develop the idea of far 

 mers' excursions to the Experimental Stations. Their excursions 

 bring in thousands of people in the course of a year. I have seen 

 at the Michigan Agricultural College five thousand people on one 

 occasion. Iowa runs excursions, and in two days last year 24,000 

 people visited the college and station. They look around the station, 

 and they become interested in the^experiments. You, who are here, 

 are not so much in need of these things, but for every one of you 

 who is here, there are ten, fifty, a hundred, or even hundreds, who 

 do need them to arouse their interest and get them started on the 

 way they should go. 



Another influence for good, and I wish I had words to paint more 

 clearly than is possible, the benefit of a great State Fair. I wish f 

 could tell you of the great fair they hold each year in Chicago, an.i 

 of the thousands of finely dressed, intelligent people who go there 

 to see the magnificent display of fine animals on exhibition there—- 

 the cattle, and the horses that cost ihcusands of dollars a piece. 

 The influence for good of an exhibition like this can not be measured. 

 You go to these great shows, and look at these thorough-bred ani- 

 mals, and you say "these are all right for the rich man, but we far- 

 mer's can't expect to have them," and then you go out and see the 

 carloads of steers that have been fed on the grain grown by this 

 great grain-growing country of ours, and you see things that will 



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