288 IOWA DEPAETMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



their conditions and many who are willing to do as you tell them because 

 you have helped them to do something more and better in dairying. In 

 the State of Iowa I believe you have a man appointed by the authorities 

 at Ames to travel over the State and encourage these things. Give them 

 your support; give Professor McKay and those men your hearty support; 

 see that you help them. Help them in their work, you that are inter- 

 ested in dairying, and you will help to send out more men in this State 

 right along that line. It takes money to do these things, but money will 

 come when you once convince the people that there is something to do 

 and something in it, when they feel that for every visit a man can make 

 them it will put dollars in their pockets they will try to have those visits 

 very frequently. 



The thing I want to talk about is to you buttermakers as artisans or 

 skilled workmen in your line of work. A few months ago at Chicago I 

 proposed a scheme for doing a little work in the markets, trying to help 

 the buttermakers, who seemed, from bad surroundings, bad environment 

 or lack of proper information, unable to make as good butter as they 

 ought for good butter markets, for the markets to which they shipped. 

 The suggestion took very kindly and I put it up to our department and 

 they sanctioned it; we got a couple of men, tried to get the best we 

 could — got one here, got- one in Minnesota — and put them to work on 

 this line. I want to explain that line of work because many buttermakers 

 have misunderstood our intention in tliis and some of you have had 

 criticisms and have not understood just how to act. The only purpose on 

 earth in putting these men in New York or Chicago was to help you, and 

 if we cannot help you we are going to quit it. Mr. Runyan can tell you 

 the commission men in New York city can take care of themselves, and 

 yet he will tell you this is helping them because it has helped them to 

 get a better grade of butter, and that is the sum and substance of the 

 work to improve the quality of our butter. 



There has always been, and is yet to a great measure, a gap between 

 the work the States are doing through State dairy and food commis- 

 sioners and inspectors they employ in the field and the marketing end 

 of our great industry. The fellow who makes the butter and the fellows 

 who are producing the milk that gees to make the butter do not know 

 anything about the other end of the line, and very often when you get 

 a letter Back from the market that has not made you feel good you are 

 apt to accuse the men of doing so in order to catch you a little. There 

 is a feeling that the fellow at the other end of the line is not pei'haps as 

 honest as he might be, and if he can find a way in any way, shape or 

 manner to cut you on test, weight or price, he will do it. I am not saying 

 that this is the case, but yet that feeling has sometimes gone out and the 

 fellow at the other end of the line has been unable to express accurately 

 to his patron just what the trouble is with the butter. He is in the 

 same position to you as you are to your fellow farmers in the country. 

 Much the same relation exists between the two sides of the work, in his 

 failure to tell you that your butter was off in certain points and not 

 being able to tell you where it was off, to put his finger on the spot be- 

 cause he was net a practical buttermaker, and this led to all this feeling 

 which I suggest. 



