380 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



in the farm institutes and telling us how to feed and care for our 

 cows and build up our farms. 



Gentlemen, this association has done a great work in the past, 

 but there is much to be done in the future. In order to accomplish 

 all that we ought, we must keep up our organization. Get your 

 brother dairymen to join our State association and pay us his 

 dollar annually. Get him to come here Farmers' Week, appropriate 

 new ideas and teach the rest of us what he knows. 



I do not believe in making a great furor and trying to induce 

 every man to become a dairyman, for if we succeed in this, our 

 business would soon be overdone, and eventually, like Othello, "our 

 occupations would be gone." But rather let us work to make, not 

 more dairymen, but better dairymen. And let us unite in our 

 great State organzation in order that we may demand and get 

 what we deserve. 



Gentlemen, at the time you elected me your presiding officer, 

 you very wisely selected Professor P. M. Brandt as your secretary 

 and Mr. Rudolph Miller your treasurer. These gentlemen, with 

 what assistance I could give them, have fought valiantly for Mis- 

 souri dairy interests. 



There has bsen, as most of you know, a bill before Congress 

 known as the Lever bill, a measure to take the tax off of colored 

 oleomargarine, which dairymen everywhere have been fighting. 

 There has been also a bill up known as the Haugen bill, which pro- 

 hibits the coloring of oleomargarine in imitation of butter. This 

 we dairymen favor. Your secretary and president have drafted 

 and sent under your president's signature, letters to all of our 

 Missouri congressmen and senators, presenting our side of the 

 question and asking their support of the Haugen bill. We received 

 promises of support from several of our congressmen and courteous 

 replies from all of them. We also sent letters and telegrams to 

 influential dairymen and creamerymen in the State, telling them the 

 bills were up and urging their immediate action. 



It is claimed by some that the millionaire packer should be 

 allowed to color his oleomargarine the same as the dairyman colors 

 his butter. This statement upon its face seems reasonable. But 

 let us see — let us look into the question. Butter is colored at 

 certain seasons of the year when the cows are somewhat under 

 artificial conditions of feed, in order to give it its natural June 

 color and not for the purpose of defrauding someone into believing 

 he is getting a different and better article. No one is ever deceived 



