74 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Commerical products requiring but few people in their 

 preparation may well be safely left to the stimulus of com- 

 petition. Those that are manufactured at a few great cen- 

 tral factories, mainly by means of machinery, representing 

 great capital, will rapidly improve under the stimulus of 

 trade. But here is a class of articles, and there are others, 

 that are the product of labor rather than of capital. From 

 their nature they can not be controled and developed by the 

 iron hand of commerce through the medium of a few master 

 minds. This class of products represents the industries of the 

 people and for their successful prosecution we must depend 

 upon general training of the masses. Germany has under- 

 taken by her technical schools to increase and to develop, and 

 to make more acceptable and effective the productive energy 

 of her people. 



And in this she is wise. Commerce will never develop 

 all the energies of a people. That they should develop is of 

 public importance, and that the commonwealth should under- 

 take the training of her citizens in these difficult industries 

 is not vicious patronage, but sound public policy. All the 

 world consumes dairy products. They are produced by the 

 great masses of the people and both consumer and producer 

 need educating. There is no need in educating the consumer 

 to a taste that the producer can not or will not satisfy, when 

 the verdict of the consumer upon goods produced by the masses 

 is -negative, the individual producer has little means of judg- 

 ing why he has failed to please, and the last thing he will do 

 is to blame himself and then to learn to produce a better 

 article. Education must always begin with the producer, 

 leaving the consumer as the responsive agent. Say what we 

 please about oleomargarine — and when it poses as butter it 

 ought to be branded with a devil rampant — the fact remains 

 that its introduction into our commerce has improved mar- 

 vel ously the quality of genuine butter. 



The public is interested that these products of the people 

 shall be of a high order. When a hundred pounds of good 

 milk made by an honest cow out of God's green grass is 

 made hy an unskilled workman into two or three x»ounds 

 of rancid four-cent butter, it is a public calamity, and the 



