EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII. 317 



the United States. This means that the demand is constantly increasing 

 for high grade goods. Are we dairymen meeting the expectations of the 

 consumers? I must answer this question in the negative. Basing my 

 judgment on the quality of butter that I have seen during the past few 

 years, in the various contests that I have had the honor to officiate as 

 judge, I would say that our butter is slowly deteriorating in quality. So 

 much so that we should call a halt and seriously consider this question. 

 If by some chance the American tariff on butter should be wiped out and 

 we had high prices, as at the present time, our markets would be flooded 

 with foreign makes of high grade butter, and much of the butter made 

 at home would not be able to hold its own in competition with the same. 



The dairy business is in rather a chaotic state. You who have trav- 

 eled over the great Canadian Rockies will remember that you came to a 

 place known as the "Great Divide." Here a raise of 1,300 feet is made in 

 ten miles and the trains have to be pushed up to the summit by three or 

 four engines. Down the mountain rushes a stream, formed from the 

 melting snow, which divides into equal parts, one part flowing on to the 

 pleasant Pacific, while the other slowly works its way to the stormy At- 

 lantic. No one looking on can fail to observe how the division weakened 

 the force of the stream. Today I believe the dairymen of this country 

 have reached this divide, so to speak. We find the centralized plants 

 arrayed against the co-operative and individual creameries, and the in- 

 dividual and co-operative creameries are arrayed against the central 

 plants. Thus the dairy forces of the country are divided and neither 

 faction can see any good in the other. 



What we need is united action and more intelligent methods. The 

 dairy schools have been training men for years to the best of their ability, 

 but these men are unable to cope with the existing conditions. I think 

 I am safe in saying that 75 per cent of our buttermakers can produce 

 first class butter if the raw material is all right. They may not be able 

 to produce butter that will score 97 or 98, but they can produce butter 

 that will score 93 or 94, and the maker who can do this will have no 

 difliculty in holding his position. We have been for years, as it were, 

 trying to purify the stream by working at the lower end when the source 

 of contamination was at the head. The great work of the future must 

 be done on the farm, not only in the use of more sanitary methods in 

 the care of milk and cream, but the question of feeding, breeding and 

 barn construction, as well as testing for the purpose of weeding out the 

 poor cows, must claim our attention. The European countries that have 

 made the greatest success in dairying are the countries that keep a num- 

 ber of field workers or instructors. 



Last year our convention passed a resolution favoring a tax of .2 of a 

 mill on every pound of butter manufactured in all creameries of our state. 

 This tax would have given us a fund sufficient to have placed fifteen men 

 in the field as instructors. Now I do not mean by instructors merely men 

 who could go into a creamery and make a good tub of butter. No 

 workman, no matter how skilled he may be, can turn out a first class 

 article if the raw material is faulty. The kind of men we need at the 

 present time for instructors are men who have had a thorough training 

 along the scientific side of dairying as well as the practical side. We 



