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ELVE AII   NUAL REPORT OF T1 
scattering it so profusely that the poorest child breathes it 
in with his very life is the prime cause of American success 
We have started on the right road but need a little more 
steam and many more tracks laid to out stations. It has 
been a very pleasant task to tell of the successes of the 
past, to count gains of the present by the millions. But how 
of the future? What lack we yet? One of our honored 
teachers has passed away. others are well advanced in 
years, their step is becoming less elastic; their heads are 
silvered o'er with the frost of many winters; how, and by 
whom is the work so well begun by such honored men as 
Arnold, Lewis and Willard to be continued and improved? 
I will arrange it under the following heads in the form of 
questions: 
let. How can technical knowledge be best acquired and diseminated? 
9d. How can quality be improved? 
8d. How can the cost be decreased? 
4th. How can the price be increased ? 
5A  What expensive implements can be cheapened or dispensed with? 
O6tL How can the cows be improved? 
7th. How can the farm be most economically bettered and the gases 
increased ? 
8th. What improvement can be made in cattle food and feedin. 
Outside of the dairy districts over one-half of the butter 
made is not good; in fact it is downright poor; perhaps one- 
fourth of it, in commercial phrase, would be called grease. 
The persons who produce this butter would like to make it 
better, and get better prices, but they don't know how. 
You will observe that I have asked more questions than I 
can answer, more I fear than the combined wisdom of this 
convention can at present. 
The quantity they produce is not sufficient to pay them for 
leaving home and placing themselves under the instruction 
of an expert; how, then, are they to acquire the knowledge? 
Through the press? Yes, partly. But how are they to be 
interested enough to take a paper devoted to dairying? 
Through this convention? No. It meets but once a year; it 
should meet at least once each month during the winter. It 
should have at least one branch association in each county 
of the state, reporting to this convention through a delegate 
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