Vermont t)AiRYMEN's AssociAlrioN. 29 



not your annual meetings are to be successful. That they have 

 been successful in the past I have been a living witness — that 

 they will continue so in the future my unbounded faith in its 

 present leaders and rank and file will not permit me to doubt. 

 When your secretary, Mr. Davis, wrote to me early last summer 

 and asked me to prepare a paper for this convention he suggested 

 that I take for a subject the importance, the in fact, absolute 

 necessity for the exercise of greater care and cleanUness in the 

 production of milk. 



It is a big subject,, one that has been handled many times 

 by men better fitted to deal with it than myself and in what 

 I say here today I shall merely emphasize what has been said 

 many times before and which, I am sorry to say, I feel convinced 

 will need to be reiterated many, many times in the years to come. 



It is, moreover, a subject that is difficult to handle without 

 treading on a great many toes, and it is also a subject that has 

 more aspects than one and I shall first deal briefly with the 

 subject as it affects the men in the creameries. 



They are all discussing it and outlining different plans for 

 bringing it about. Pick up any of the creamery papers and you 

 will find a large part of their space taken up in dealing with this 

 problem. How can we induce, or force, it doesn't matter which, 

 our patrons to take better care of their milk? 



How can we get them to approach, however slowly, a sani- 

 tary standard? Some of them apparently spend so much, time in 

 deep thought on this point that they entirely overlook the neces- 

 sity of realizing themselves, — at least a fairly decent sanitary 

 standard. 



The creamery man who has several large beams in his own 

 eye is rather handicapped when he attempts to remove the mote 

 out of his patron's eyes, and whatever he may say about the 

 necessity for greater cleanliness in handling milk while in their 

 possession, will largely lose its force when they see every day the 

 unsanitary condition in which it is handled while in ]iis posses- 

 sion. Floors that seldom get a thorough scrubbing, dirty vats, 

 churns, implements and separators and skim-milk tanks that are, 

 to use rather an inelegant expression, fairly rotten, do not 

 impress the farmer with the necessity for cleanliness in pro- 

 ducing milk. 



So I say that the first step necessary in the solution of this 

 problem is cleanliness on the part of the creamery man himself. 

 L'ntil he takes this step he will not be heard to insist that the 

 patrons must take better care of their milk and produce it under 

 more sanitary conditions. 



After taking this step, as many of them have tlone, he is 

 in a position to demand that the farmers supplying him with 



