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have a laxative effect upon the pig; it is the general belief that pigs do not thrive so well on buttermilk as on skim milk.

Prof. Hills-The annual session of our dairy school opened yesterday, and we hope to have, to-morrow morning and Thursday, just as many visitors as the buildings will hold. We shall be glad to see you all, and will show you over the buildings. We have fifty students, and there are now six or seven separators in place.

President Arms-We will now listen to a few words from Mr. D. D. Howe, superintendent of the Experiment Station farm.

REMARKS OF MR. HOWE.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is with much diffidence that I address you, but it is certainly a pleasure for me to be with you and to see so many farmers who are interested in dairying. The dairying interest in this state leads all others and it is refreshing to see so many of our young men, and some of the older ones, who have been attending to the sheep and horse business, disposing of their stock and looking around for cows; and we expect and hope they are looking out for good ones, for with a good cow we can do more to lift the mortgage from our farms than with any other stock, I believe.

Wiser heads than ours saw years ago what we were coming to, and while the lawyers and physicians and politicians were preparing themselves to get in ahead of the farmer, if possible, such provisions were made by the government as put the farmer ahead of them all; I refer to the work of Uncle Sam in putting his hands in his pocket and providing agricultural colleges; we have one in this state and in connection with that we have a farm, and I have been introduced to you as the superintendent of that farm. I just want to say that I have enjoyed myself very much since a year ago last April, in living upon that farm and caring for the dairy herd, and for the crops grown on the farm. I have no doubt I have made many mistakes; I know I have, but think in some respects we have made some gains; of course we have to have some misfortunes as well as other farmers. I wish we had more agriculture and more dairying taught in our common schools; I am in favor of anything that will increase the farmer's knowledge of dairying and teach him the best methods; and I am glad that we have this dairymen's meeting; I think the state board of agriculture should bring up dairying in their meetings as they are held in the different counties in the state; and I wish every town had some sort of a farmers' club or farmers' meetings where they could get together and criticise each other in a friendly way; I think there might be some gain in agriculture and especially in dairying. I have been very much interested in the last few days in that chart which you can see (pointing to chart on the wall). "Record

of the dairy herd for 1893." Several students who are taking the agricultural course, young men whom I feel proud of for the interest they are taking in the subject, have been interested in the preparation of the chart. One young man who has been home through Christmas, when he came back showed me a chart that he had made, based on experiments with his father's herd, trying to find out which was the best cow; several of the boys came in and looked over the chart and were thoroughly interested. It is a good thing to make these experiments on the farm with a herd of cows, because we find that there is a great liability to the making of mistakes. This fall I was at my old home on the other side of the mountain and was at the barn of one of my friends, who had some very nice cows, and some of them Jerseys, and he told about them and told me which was his best cow; the next morning I went out while he was milking and took some samples of the milk and brought back to the farm and had it tested. The cow that he called his best tested 3.50, and the other that he thought was the poorest tested 6.50, which shows the necessity for education in the direction I suggested; that should encourage you to send your sons to the dairy schools, or to this or some other agricultural college; it would tend to an improvement in the cows all over the state.

I will take but a few minutes of your time in referring to the chart, as you can all see the figures for yourselves, I hope. It is as to the amount of butter that I shall speak and not about the feeding. Our watchword in the management of our dairy herd has been "kindness;" we do not intend to have any help in our barns, who do not use the cows with kindness, and they are cared for just as well as we know how to care for them; when at home we have only one man in the barn. Take, for instance, the first cow on the record, Laviolette, a little Jersey, registered, coming from the Billings herd, four years old; she has gained and made more butter from the first year she came in; this year she made 402 pounds. Margeri is a registered cow with a good pedigree, but only made 266 pounds. We have been selling our butter at 30 cents a pound, so that one cow brought us in $40.80 more than the other one. Here is a point for young dairymen to consider; in ten cows that would give $408, and for ten years $4080. Is not that worth saving? I will refer you to the cow named Creamer, a great Ayrshire; she has made us, with just common care, 437 pounds. We commenced with her on 25 pounds of ensilage at night, and all the hay she would eat in the morning; four pounds of meal and four of bran a day at two feeds. She had four weeks of whole ensilage, and she relished it, and did well and held her own; then she was changed to a corn fodder with the ears taken off and ground, and she did not do so well or make so much butter.

We ought to recognize the fact that we live in a world of push and hustle, and we have got to keep up and do as the rest do. I will

make a comparison with two two year-old heifers: Marguerite, with four pounds of meal and four pounds of bran a day in two feeds, and what ensilage she would eat at night and what hay she would eat in the morning, has made 280 pounds of butter. Bess, a Holstein, has given us 152 pounds of butter on the same feed, so you see the difference between the two with the same feed. We have on that record the name of Brighteyes, a registered animal that came from Pomfret; compare her with the Holstein cow Pipchin; she gives us 10,764 pounds of milk, or 414 pounds of butter, and Brighteyes gave us 6,658 pounds of milk which made 421 pounds of butter. Brighteyes ate for the first six months, six pounds of meal and four pounds of bran, which was afterwards increased to six pounds of meal and six pounds of bran, while Pipchin, through the year had eight pounds of meal and eight pounds of bran. conclusion let me say, if you will come up to the farm I will give you all the information you will require.

Mrs. Nelson-What kind of meal did you use?

Mr. Howe-Corn meal; our regular ration is meal and bran; when we feed gluten food, we calculate to feed what is equal to four pounds of meal and four pounds of bran.

Mr. Fassett-Do you feed your meal dry or wet?

Mr. Howe-Dry. We feed it in the morning after milking; first meal, then hay; at night we have the meal and bran poured on to the ensilage, letting them eat it with the ensilage. The water is in buckets in front of the cows and is the same temperature as the barn.

COMMITTEE ON "SHARPLESS" PRIZE.

On a motion of Treasurer Homer W. Vail, the president appointed the following committee on the "Sharpless" prize for the best essay: Hon. Cloud Harvey of Barnet, Prof. Hills of Burlington.

COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS.

On motion the chair also appointed a committee on resolutions, as follows: Hon. V. I. Spear of Braintree, William Stewart of Burlington and L. K. Osgood of Rutland,

TUBERCULOSIS.

Prof. Hills then said it was his sorrowful duty to state that it had been discovered that some of the cows at the Experiment Station were affected with tuberculosis, but that immediate steps would be taken to prevent the spread of the disease.

A recess was then taken until 7 P. M.

TUESDAY EVENING SESSION.

Every seat in the building was occupied at the opening of the evening session, which was called to order at 7.30 P. M. by President Arms. The first thing was music by the college quartette, who gave several selections which were well received by the audience, and liberally applauded.

President Arms-The first paper this evening will be by Mr. Rollin W. Whitney of Springfield; his subject is "Some Economies in Dairying."

ADDRESS OF MR. WHITNEY.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a tendency of our times to reduce the profits of capital to a lower rate than was ever known before. This is seen in all legitimate business, and is the result of the successful demand for increased compensation on the part of those who perform the labor necessary to carry on business. In the strife between capital and labor, which has been going on since civilization began, the laborer has been gaining rapidly of late, and whether this will continue until the dreams of Bellamy and the Nationalists are realized would be but idle speculation. But certain it is that the men and women who perform the mental and physical labor of the world are better paid than formerly, and capital is constantly growing cheaper and is continually seeking new fields and forming new combinations, and profits are made, if at all, by a small per cent on a large production, and then only by reducing every department to a perfect system, and by the use of economy in every department.

It is said that in many of our large manufactories, the only profit is made by saving what was wasted under smaller and less perfect methods.

But I am not to discuss the labor question, and only mention it as an illustration of what organization will do, and can we not as farmers, find a lesson in it that we can profit by?

When we see organized labor, securing in a few years what a strife of centuries had failed to attain without organization, shall we continue to plod along alone, and fight our battles individually?

Nearly all other classes are organized for protection and aggression if need be. An organization among dairymen has become necessary for protection against such frauds as oleomargarine, and in the revision of our revenue law, which seems about to be made, farmers must see that the organized manufactories do not receive all the protection and the farmer enjoy all the benefits of free trade in what he produces.

The farmer or a dairyman, and the terms are getting to be synonymous in Vermont, is usually a laborer, and to some extent a capitalist also; for to be successful he must give a personal oversight to his business, and in many cases does, in addition to this, as much work as any one he can hire; and he must necessarily have some capital invested in stock and implements, if not in the soil he tills, and to secure a profit on his capital and a fair return for his labor, requires business talent of no mean order.

In our fathers' days, a few thousands invested in farm and stock made one a capitalist, indeed, the unexhausted soil assuring him abundant crops; now many such a one has less net income than an ordinary farm hand. This is because they can never change, and continue using obsolete methods, and spend their time in making complaints and wondering why the world will not wait for them; but the world never waits for grumblers and only those who recognize that the world does move, and can adapt themselves to new conditions can hope to maintain themselves in times of depressions like these.

In the business world we see economy everywhere, in time, in methods and in materials. The dairymen must adopt these practices; and by economy, I mean to use the word in a broad sense. There is economy in spending as well as in saving, and to economize sometimes a large outlay is necessary. Horace Greeley once said that there is nothing bores people like instruction, for it implies that they do not know everything already. Now in mentioning a few of the economies that may be employed in dairying, I do not wish to be regarded as an instructor, but rather a finger-post to point to the right or to warn of danger ahead.

The source of all dairying is the cow, and the greatest attribute a dairyman can have is good sound judgment, and this attribute will be required in selecting his herd and weeding out unprofitable animals.

The Channel Island cattle are so pre-eminently superior to all others for the butter dairy, that were not my friend, Mr. Aitkin, to tell us all about the Jersey cow at this meeting, I would present her claims to the attention of all dairymen and try to point out the economy of securing animals of this blood for every herd.

The Jerseys are now so plenty in Vermont that they may be obtained without paying extravagant prices, and right here will be a chance for the exercise of that good judgment with which every dairymen is supposed to be supplied; for although I hold that the breeders of Jersey stock are among the most upright of mankind, I fear that some of them would, if sorely tempted, unload some of their culls upon a greenhorn, thinking that when he made his next trade he would be wiser and could afford to pay for his wisdom. But a profit can be made from good cows of any herd, while ordinary and poor ones, however well cared for, will result in loss and disappoint

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