Thirty-fourth Annual Convention. 29 



to give the biittermakers an interest in the contest part of it, that 

 is to get into a contest for prizes, and that is a very good thing. 

 We have to have something to arouse interest along that Hne, 

 but a great many buttermakers come into a contest only for that 

 feature of it. We find this is shown very plainly when a con- 

 test is purely educational. A contest at a convention, where 

 there are prizes, considerable premium money and perhaps a 

 gold medal, will have a larger exhibit than one Avhich is run on 

 purely educational lines. That I have noticed very plainly in 

 this state. I have been scoring butter for the state dairy and 

 food department in an educational contest where no prizes, of 

 any consequence, are awarded ; there may be a few small prizes 

 given but nothing of any great moment. It is a contest simply 

 for educational purposes and they have had from twenty to twen- 

 ty-five tubs in each contest I believe the past summer, while in 

 the contest in this convention, where there is some prize money, 

 there are over twice that number of tubs. 



If the buttermakers only realized the chance that it gives 

 them to find cut exactly the kind of butter they are making and 

 how their product compares with that made by the other butter- 

 makers in the state, they would go into this matter from an edu- 

 cational standpoint. A buttermaker who wants to improve him- 

 self and find out the best methods of handling his product, should 

 not miss an opportunity to go in an educational contest. In 

 looking over the ranks, we find the buttermakers that have come 

 to the front and have become really expert makers are the ones 

 that have always taken advantage of the scoring contests that 

 were carried on, and there are a few, quite a few, who will sit 

 back and say that the score is all humbug and that the contests 

 are simply ^'graft." Those men are usually nonprogressing, men 

 satisfied with the methods used ten or fifteen years ago and who 

 will not admit that we are progressing in the art of buttermaking, 

 and I do not know that it would do them any good to come into 

 the contests because if they did they would not accept the score 

 as indicating the true condition of their butter. 



I saw a case not long ago, where one of these old butter- 

 makers had made a lot of butter for a contest this year in another 

 state, where I happened to be scoring the butter, made his butter 

 from one day's old milk. He had taken a great deal of trouble 

 with it, the butter being made from the morning's milk, which he 



