270 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



better than it is today. I do not know why that is true except perhaps 

 because they admire good losers. The boys up there are going to keep 

 right on trying, and they want you to keep right in the race. I want to 

 tell you that any banners Minnesota buttermakers lose to the butter- 

 makers of any other State we would just a little rather see go to Iowa 

 than anywhere else. I hope you will do something to get them; we will 

 keep right on trying ourselves, but if we cannot land them let's see them 

 come to Iowa. 



The story of the Baldwin apples reminds me of a story I heard the 

 other day. A man in referring to a bald headed man as a self-made man 

 was wondering, as long as he made himself, why he did not put a little 

 more hair on his head. Now I might have turned that around and 

 applied it to your President, but I am not mean enough to do that. 



If I were to attempt to make you a speech it would be so garbled up 

 that it would mean about as much to you as the remarks of a German 

 barber when a patron came to his shop, got partly shaved, and noticing 

 a friend going by the door he jumped up and ran out, and while he was 

 gone another man got into the chair. When he came in he was very 

 much exercised about the proceedings and, getting badly worked up, he 

 said to the barber, "When a man comes in and goes out, has he went?" 

 The barber scratched his head and wondered a minute and said, "He was 

 but he ain't." You will get as much sense out of that as a speech I 

 would try to make to you Iowa buttermakers without preparation, that is, 

 an extended one. I have a speech I wrote one time but never delivered it; 

 I got part way through it at a convention in Minnesota and the reception 

 it got convinced me that I had better never try to finish it, so I got out 

 of the idea of trying to prepare my speeches at all. 



I am not going to take up your time; if you want to get out of this 

 hall as badly as I do you will want me to cut off short, but I do want to 

 emphasize what President Shilling has said here tonight in regard to 

 this quality question. That applies just as much to Iowa buttermakers 

 and dairymen as it does to other States, and I say it with as much sin- 

 cerity to your people in Iowa as I would say it in speaking to my own 

 dairymen, that is the quality question. Your president has told you we 

 have to do something, and he has. further said that it lays with you but- 

 ter-makers to take the initiative and push this improvement along. You 

 take a buttermaker and put him in an average creamery, if he stays 

 there long enough will build up or burst up that creamery. Just that 

 much responsibility rests on the shoulders of the buttermaker. 



We have many good buttermakers in Minnesota, you have many good 

 buttermakers in Iowa. We have a lot of poor buttermakers in Minne- 

 sota, and I think you must have a few in Iowa. I think I will be safe in 

 betting on that proposition. If every buttermaker in the State of Iowa 

 will just try to do a little more to improve the quality of the product 

 he Is turning out at his factory, there will be the solution of the whole 

 trouble. Now how is he going at it? Not only by trying to manufacture 

 the raw material into the finished product in the most scientific manner, 

 but he must go out and work with the farmers and try to get better raw 

 material. At the present time we have not much to put up to the farmer 

 In the way of argument as long as poor butter sells for the price it does. 



