not time to discuss it, but I wish to refer to this fact, that the quality of ensilage in the State of Vermont has largely changed during the past ten or twelve years, to my knowledge; and it has been found that a sweeter ensilage can be made from corn more nearly ripe than in the way it was used in earlier days. I believe it can be put up so that it will be very nearly sweet. I am glad that our farmers are getting hold of this matter of putting up ensilages that will be in the best possible condition. Farmers have experienced much trouble from the improper condition of ensilage, owing to its tendency to sour. I have seen ensilage put up out of southern corn, grown ten or twelve feet high with scarcely a leaf on it, without even a show of an ear, and I have seen that come out so sour that the cattle would refuse to eat it. I believe that kind of ensilage is injurious to animals; but in putting up our corn in more anvanced stages of growth we have overcome that trouble and are to-day giving our cows a better ensilage and more in accordance with the perfect manner of feeding.

President Sanford: I wish to congratulate you on having done so good a forenoon's work. We will now take a recess until 1:30 P. M.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION.

Mr. Scarff produced two tubs of butterine and placed them on the platform for inspection. In his remarks concerning this article, he said: These are sample packages which I have procured from a southern concern, manufacturing butterine, and are recommended to me as being the best quality of this article manufactured and placed upon the market. I shall be pleased to have the members of this Association examine this butterine and compare it with our Vermont butter.

Secretary Pierce: In addition to what Mr. Scarff has said, I understand this butterine is at the disposal of the members. If any members wish to take home a sample of it and compare it with their own butter they are at liberty to do so.

I wish to make this announcement, that the room for dairy exhibits is open; the judges have passed upon the butter and cheese, and the awards will be given to-morrow morning. The judges will go through with exhibitors this afternoon and point out the points of excellence as well as the defects in these goods, and will make suggestions which I am sure will be for your interest, if any of the members desire to do so. The judges say they found less water than ever before in any exhibit of butter shown in Vermont, which I

presume will please you all, and shows that we are working along the right lines of improved butter making.

Mr. Scarff wishes me to state that all parties receiving prizes, in both butter and cheese exhibit, if they will come to him at any time before the convention closes, they will receive the Vermont Farmers' Advocate free for one year.

Possibly some who were not in this morning will be glad to become members of this Association. They can do so during the meeting, by paying one dollar to the Secretary here at the desk. By becoming members you are entitled to receive copies of the annual report, and all literature published by this Association.

President Sanford: There are a few copies of the Maine Farmer now on the platform, placed there for distribution.

The subject before you this afternoon is of a good deal of importance to Vermont. Co-operate or associate farming has been formulating itself into shape for a good many years, and we think it has been very satisfactory. It wants more investigation. It is in an inadequate condition as compared with what it may be. We want it perfect. Perhaps I am a crank on this subject, but I am looking forward to a time when the dairy interests of our state will be thoroughly consolidated. The Elgin people have done this. we do this we can make a price upon our products as well as to allow the Elgin people to do it for us. We turn out from our dairies a larger product in a week than they do in several months. Your officers have gone outside of the state for a man to treat this subject and present it before you. I take pleasure in introducing to you Hon. Z. A. Gilbert of Maine. (Applause.)

ASSOCIATED DAIRYING, FROM THE FARMER'S SIDE.

BY Z. A. GILBERT, NORTH GREENE, ME.

Mr. President, and Members of the Vermont Dairymen's Association, Ladies and Gentlemen: I appreciate the high compliment of this invitation to address your convention, and only wish that my response might be made in a currency on a par value with the confidence that prompted the invitation.

I have long been a student of associated dairying. My personal interests, public duties and neighborhood associations, all have combined to lead me to look carefully and critically into the details of the business, and weigh well the interests involved on both sides of this problem of pooling our interests in the manufacture of dairy products. In the consideration of the details of this method of work among farmers, and between them and the business side of the work, I have found much that seems to reach and fit into many of the conditions found among the farmers, both in your state and mine, as existing at the present time, and by which we are necessarily more

or less controlled. Hence I have labored earnestly and have argued long and loud for the introduction and permanent establishment of the associated system of dairy work among us. It has finally become an established system, and not only here in New England but throughout the dairy sections of the entire country. The work of establishing this system of dairying having then been thus accomplished, it devolves upon us now to turn our attention to perfecting its details. In order to do this we must have a clear understanding of how the business stands at the present time.

Characterized by

Your state is pre-eminently a dairy state. many of the natural requirements for a successful prosecution of this work, your farmers have caught on to the situation until it has become the leading farm industry, and a larger proportion of your people are engaged in the business than in any other state of the Union. In this particular direction only, mind you, I am ready to admit you are ahead of my own state. Your State Association is the pioneer in public dairy instruction, and while it has been doing so great a work among yourselves, it has also aided in extending and improving the business in other states as well. Well do I remember when one of the early volumes of your transactions came into my possession, how eagerly I perused its contents, and with what intense interest I studied its teachings. Through the aid of your association and an intelligent attention to the business on the part of your people engaged in it, great progress has been made You have been at work on the problem of the cow, breeding, selecting, feeding, critically studying her every peculiarity and solicitously caring for her every want, till you have brought her up to a production above that of any other dairy section of the country, and I fear ⚫ a little higher than her powers of endurance will bear. You have worked on the quality of the product till you have mastered every feature, and are furnishing to the market as good butter as is known to the business. Later, you have been grappling with that great problem over which the world has been struggling for a solution, the labor involved, till you landed where all other great manufacturing industries are trying to go, through co-operation to consolidation into the most extensive butter making enterprise known to the wide world. Truly you may well pause in so successful a career, and with the world's great warriors inquire whether there are yet other worlds to conquer.

CO-OPERATION.

But this question of co-operation and consolidation is not a simple problem, and it needs looking after a little further. In my earlier consideration of the adaptation of the business of dairying to our eastern conditions, I saw no other way for its general adoption only through association. Those same conditions hold rule at the present time, and even with more force with the added years. They are

many and exacting. New England is a land of homes, limited in area but boundless in quiet comfort and intelligent independence. For various reasons it is impracticable to generally manufacture the products of the dairy at these homes. If so done it can only be by employed help. This could only be profitably introduced where the business is on a large scale. This would necessarily call for a consolidation of individual farms and a decrease of the number of these farm homes. Far be it from me to advocate any measure that will consolidate the farms and reduce the number of these homes. They are the pride and the glory of our New England, and we want more of them rather than less; and I fully believe we are on the eve of multiplying them if we have not already commenced. So a general dairy business necessarily calls for associated work. I ask you to look this matter over with me and see how we stand. If I mistake not, right here we encounter some unsolved problems of the business. Massing the work considered from a business standpoint is right. This of course can only be done in our situation by enlisting a large number of individual interests. Co-operation is based on the principle that the interests of each individual concerned, on whichever side of the contract, shall be alike guarded and protected. In other words co-operation is working together on equal terms. I ask you to look over our associated dairying as now conducted and see if each party to the contract is alike protected in such rights.

The creameries in your state, as I understand the matter, are mostly proprietory. Where purely co-operative enterprises of the kind have been started, so far as I have observed, sooner or later in most cases, the business is either sold out or leased to an individual to be conducted by himself in his own right. This proprietor contracts with the individual farmers, at a stipulated price, for the butter fat contained in the milk or cream furnished or the butter made from it, as the case may be. The proprietor uses the Babcock test to measure the butter fat, calculates the quantity of butter it will make and pays the makers of the milk-what? In fact when you come down to the real bearing of the method, just what is his pleasure. After the milk or cream is delivered to the factory or to the collector the farmer knows nothing further of it or about it, nor has he the means of knowing. Neither is his further interest in the product delivered, guarded or protected in any way by law.

Now this is all wrong. There is neither sense nor justice in a transaction so one-sided and uncertain. Its parallel cannot be found elsewhere in any line of trade. The farmer carries a dressed hog to market and the law protects him in the transaction and pro vides a way through which he may know he is getting correct weight. A party buys a bushel of potatoes and they may know they are getting the amount they pay for. A dealer sells a bag of meal, a pound short weight and the statutes hold him guilty of swindling. It is only when we come to milk and cream in co-operative work that the

dairyman is open to frauds and cheats without protection. It would be the height of folly to claim there are no cheats going on in these transactions. As well claim that all men are honest. A neighbor of mine was formerly in the business of making cheese and jobbing them to the grocers. He found it absolutely necessary to take the weight of each separate cheese before taking them to market in order to provide against being defrauded in weights.

I called attention a year ago at your convention to possible inaccuracies in the use of the Babcock test in the measurement of the value of milk and cream, though at the time it seemed to enlist but little attention. For some reason those who have been instrumental in pushing this apparatus into use have neglected entirely the unprotected side of the problem. My purpose in again calling attention to this appliance is not by any means to raise distrust in its use as a measure of the value of milk and cream, for in proper hands no one can question but it is approximately accurate in its work, and all admit that up to the present time it is the best instrument for measuring the value of milk and cream that has ever been invented. In corresponding with Dr. Collier while director of the Geneva station -a gentleman in whose scientific attainments every intelligent farmer in your state has the utmost confidence-in regard to inaccuracies found in the test measuring bottles, the doctor while admitting the fact and stating that he had called the attention of the Department of Agriculture to it, at the same time expressed the hope that I would not so agitate the matter as to destroy public confidence in the best method ever devised for measuring the value of milk. Others have expressed themselves in a similar way. Thus silence has been enjoined, and certainly been observed throughout the land by dairy investigators and dairy teachers alike as to any possible errors in connection with this system of work. The system by which we are at present working is right; the theory of the test is sound. The difficulty in the matter is with its application. Possibly the reasons our dairy investigators have not worked this side of the problem may be that they conclude it is enough for them to develop and establish the principle, leaving to others the problem of its reliable application. At any rate it seems to be left for us to look out for our side of the problem. The manufacturers'-the proprietor's interests in co-operative work are all guarded. I am one of the producers of milk-I am on the unprotected side of this prob lem, and I am here to consider ways, means and methods through which, if possible, the producers of the milk may be assured of their rightful share under our present methods of pooling milk in co-operative work.

In order to bring out the point I would make and clearly show how unprotected the producers interests are under our present system of co-operative work, let us look over for a moment the way this work is carried on. Admitted, the Babcock test accurately used