THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 523 



EVENING SESSION. 



Meeting called to order by president at 8 :00 p. m. The Cedar 

 Rapids orchestra were present and furnished music. 



President : For the past two years almost the entire agricul- 

 tural world has turned its eyes Iowaward. The Ames Agricultural 

 College, of which every man who lives in Iowa is proud, has achieved 

 such success that it has directed universal attention to it. We have 

 with us tonight the man whom largely the credit is due, Prof. Curtiss 

 of Ames. 



MODERN DAIRYING. 



Prof. C. F. Curtiss. Ames, Ioica. 

 I am glad indeed to have the privilege of meeting with this association 

 in the good old dairy stronghold of Linn county, and while it may not make 

 as many pounds of butter per square mile as some others, yet I know of 

 no other city which dispenses more genuine hospitality to the square inch 

 than Cedar Rapids, and the calling of a meeting in this city always insures 

 a good convention. 



A few years ago when it was believed that the dairy belt of the United 

 States would always lie east of the Alleghany Mountains, a pertinent ques- 

 tion asked was, "Can anything good in the way of dairying ever come out 

 of the west?" About that time Iowa concluded to go into the dairy busi- 

 ness. She made her first appearance in a national contest at the Centen- 

 nial Exposition in 1876 and when the contest was over Iowa butter carried 

 off the gold medal and the highest honors. The old stone creamery in 

 which this butter was made remained for many years as a landmark by 

 the side of a little spring in the edge of Manchester, the county seat of 

 Delaware, the pioneer dairy county of Iowa. Since that time our dairy 

 interests have grown until Iowa occupies the proud position of producing 

 more creamery butter than any other state in the Union and about one- 

 fifth of all the dairy butter made in the United States. If the Iowa cows 

 were to go out on a strike for sixty days, there is scarcely a family table 

 in America that would not feel its effect. Nor is that all but for five years 

 past the Iowa State College Creamery has each winter sent an Iowa born, 

 bred and educated boy to Amherst to teach the sons of old Massachusetts 

 to make strictly first-class, prize-winning, market-topping butter. And 

 more than that. Iowa boys have made butter that has taken the highest 

 rank in national contests in competition with eight hundred exhibitors 

 from every dairy state in the Union ; and Iowa trained boys are today mak- 

 ing butter in practically every dairy section in the United States. Gentle- 

 men, I take no stock in the doctrine that the dairy interests of Iowa have 

 permanently declined or that Iowa butter has deteriorated even if our but- 

 termakers have fallen out of the first ranks in a recent national contest. 

 The Iowa butter makers are not quitters. They are not made of that kind 



