150 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
may succumb to enervating surroundings, but at 
the first call to battle it is ready. Not only did the 
men do the manual labor, but, as time went on, the 
most capable of them became overseers in the vari- 
ous departments, until finally all the directors of this 
great estate, excepting a few of the highest officials, 
were drawn from the ranks of the people, who proved 
themselves so trustworthy and capable that in all 
these years only three or four of Biltmore's moun- 
taineer employees have had to be dismissed for 
inefficiency or bad conduct. 
Nor was the dissemination of new ideas confined 
to the people at work on the estate. Milk from Bilt- 
more appeared at Asheville in glass bottles, while 
Biltmore butter shot a golden ray into the lives of 
discriminating visitors to Asheville. To-day all the 
milk in Asheville is delivered to the better class of 
customers in glass bottles, and the country dairies 
have been remodeled to meet the growing demand 
for cleanliness; and for it to be said of a dairyman, 
"He got his training at Biltmore and follows Bilt- 
more methods," is the same as a gold medal from 
the last World's Congress. When such novelties as 
spinach and celery appeared in the Asheville market, 
the mountaineer scorned them until he discovered 
that people really did buy them, when he began to 
take interest. In this way gradually came better 
varieties of all the vegetables, until the Asheville 
market was transformed. And whether Biltmore 
really was the mother of every new good thing that 
came, it at least got the credit for being. 
