FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 83 



college is probably the foremost. You have one of the oldest in Michigan 

 here if I remember rightly. You antedated the action of congress. The 

 M. A. C. has turned out a very great amount of excellent work. The 

 college at one time was the very foremost in the land but others have 

 come to see your good works and are patterning after you. Look oiit 

 and not let any of them get ahead of you. The agricultural press is an 

 agency for the education of the American farmer, but the agricultural 

 press never amounted to anything until the editor went to work to get 

 something to put in his newspaper. 



Within the memory of you and me, and we are not very old yet, at least I 

 feel young, when good butter was made on the farm, no one knew how 

 much was lost in the buttermilk. Xo one knew how much of the curd 

 was lost in the whey. There was no uniformity in butter. One of the 

 very latest requests that came to the department of agriculture was from 

 the farmers of southern Georgia. We grow cane, do not make sugar, we 

 make syrup. The trouble is we have no uniformity. Will you help us? 

 We will show you how to get uniformity in making your syrup. A little 

 taste of the cane must be gotten rid of. You must be able to put an 

 article on the market that is honest. I do not care to eat syrups that 

 are doctored with chemicals. 



To go back to the butter and cheese. The educated man has taught 

 the American people how to make uniform butter and uniform cheese. 

 We keep a man in China for example, opening up markets for our butter. 

 I have a problem to be solved. You may as well undertake it as any one 

 else. The butter that we send to the China sea does not stand the hot 

 weather as well as the butter that goes from Denmark there. Our butter 

 men in the United States feed the cows a highly carbonaceous ration. 

 If you look carefully into the ration you will find that they are feeding 

 hay and corn, and you know that is a wide ration. The Dane does not 

 feed as wide a ration as that. He sends to the United States and buys 

 our oil meal, cotton seed meal, and he feeds a narrow ration to the dairy 

 cow, and sends all over the world a product that stands up better than 

 our butter. We are up against that. Y'ou have the by-products here 

 and you have them in different kinds and you can contribute materially 

 to our help. This is the kind of work that I cannot get done at Wash- 

 ington. I have no cows in the agricultural dep^^rtment. I have some- 

 times picked out a goose, but I haven't any cows. 



In passing along, speaking of the influences that are reaching the 

 farmers, I must not overlook the farmers' institutes. At one time any- 

 body could be called into the club who could tell a story, and after he 

 told the story it was repeated until a new story was told. That kind of 

 talk won't serve nowadays. In a farmers' meeting a man must be well 

 up, bring his contribution that is new and entertaining with regard to 

 some of the specialties connected with the production either of the farm 

 or the orchard. There are a thousand directions in which he can do it, and 

 he does do it, and this education that is disseminated among the American 

 farmers is enabling them to help the American manufacturer, and all 

 people interested in the progress of the United States to carry on their 

 industries. The American farmer feeds his people the best and the cheap- 

 est. He feeds the American mechanic well, and compared with other 

 countries he feeds him cheaper. 



Let me run over briefly the work of the great bureaus of the depart- 

 ment. Take the weather bureau. The next thing we are going to do for 



