554 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Pkesident: The next on the program is "Buttermaking as a 

 Profession," by Prof. McKay, of Ames. I want to say right now 

 that Prof. McKay is feeling extraordinarily good. He said he 

 never felt better at a convention. I presume it is because all the 

 highest scores were taken by former Ames students. 



THE BUTTER MAKER'S PROFESSION. 



Prof. O. L. McKay, Ames, Iowa. 



Within recent years many changes have taken place in buttter mak- 

 ing. It was formerly supposed that most any one who was neat and tidy 

 could make good butter. Since investigations have been pursued along 

 scientific lines, we find that it requires skilled labor. 



The men who are pursuing dairying at our school now are possibly 

 twenty-five per cent in advance both in education and skill of the students 

 who took dairy work seven or eight years ago. As we look the country 

 over, we find the people who have become famous in the dairy world are 

 men of unusual intelligence, who would undoubtedly have made a success 

 in most any other line of business. I like self esteem in a young man. 

 I like to see the young man with the "git there" spirit in him, no matter 

 what line of work he is pursuing. I believe every young man has enough 

 natural ability to acquire an education providing he has the will power 

 to assert himself. It is the lack of self conceit that keeps a man from ris- 

 ing to the level that it is possible for him to attain. We complain fre- 

 quently about people being egotistical. I admire a certain amount of this 

 quality in any person. This is an age of combinations and concentration of 

 capital. It is also an age of specialists. The general purpose man must 

 necessarily fall to the rear. Every man should be educated along some 

 line of business. While I am a strong believer in adaptability, I cannot 

 think that a man wfio has made a success as a specialist would have been 

 a failure in some other business, if he had applied the same energy and 

 thought to it. 



Success in any business never comes by chance or luck. Chauncey 

 Depew, being asked by a young man to give the secret of success, replied, 

 "My boy, there is no secret to it. It is just dig, dig, dig." Edison being 

 asked to give the definition of genius, answered, "Two per cent is genius, 

 ninety-eight per cent is hard work." On another occasion when this great 

 inventor was asked if he did not believe that genius was simply inspiration, 

 he replied, "No, genius is perspiration." The editor of a western news- 

 paper sent to all the successful men in the city this question, "Why is it 

 that not more of our young men succeed?" And one answer came back 

 in this laconic phrase, "Because too many of them are looking for white 

 shirt jobs." Possibly this was a homely way of saying it but it is true in 

 many cases, especially wHh many of our college graduates. Some imagine 

 because they have a college education they must necessarily get an easy, 

 high salaried position. It is well to have a technical education but it is 



