The Gospel of the Cow: A Governor Tells Washington Dairymen How to Get Rich

Hon. W. D. Hoard was called for and was greeted with applause. "Your president," he said, "makes me feel like a small boy who has been caught with his finger in his mother's preserve jar. I appreciate your welcome greatly. I have but eight years more of the allotted life of man to live, but I have not got so old but that a warm glow of feeling comes over me to be met with such a hearty greeting. If my efforts have accomplished anything in the elevating of the dignity of human labor, the better endowment of the home, the wife and family, I shall have but upheld the insignia of American citizenship. This gospel of the cow that I have been endeavoring to preach for 30 years in the west still lingers with increasing realization. You know that Christ said that 'everything should be added to them that love the Lord.' I may say in a material sense that everything may be added to the man that loves the cow. W. C. White, of Wisconsin, said to me once: 'I always speak to a cow as I would to a lady.'

"I commenced 40 years ago the physiological study of the cow, and I have 3,000 passbooks in which are entered notes of separate studies of 3,000 cows. I have been striving to solve the mysteries that surround her. The darkest place on God's green earth is the inside of a cow. The truth is what we have been trying to get at. Christ said — I am fond of quoting that man Christ, for he was a good dairyman — 'The truth shall make you free.' Error and stupidity shall make you slaves. Now, if you will pardon me, I am going to tell you a little story to illustrate the advantage of exerting intelligent, well-directed effort.

A Story by the Governor.

"There came into my office a number of years ago a little German. 'I vant to speak mit you,' he said. 'I hear you talk down mit der school house und dot talk go all over mine head. I got me 60 acres land, I got me frau, I got me six childrens, I got me mortgage, und I work und work und work, und I don't got me any money, und I don'd can get rid of dot mortgage.'

"I thought: If I have any practical conception in me, I will get down to where that little Dutchman is! And I did, and it occurred to me the line of thought that would find the way out for him.

"He had nine cows. 'I take mine butter to der store, und der storekeeper say "Dot butter stink!" und den I got me some codfish und maybe some leedle dings. I don'd got nodings for dot butter.'

"Now you know when a man comes up alongside of you with almost pathetic sincerity it appeals to you pretty strongly.

"'Do you know, Carl,' I said, 'I can tell you why you don't get anything for your butter. You set it out where your frau boils cabbage, and the steam from the washing clothes, and the smoke from your pipe gets a chance at it. When you take it to town it is a record of your condition.'

"'Yah, yah, dot kind of spraken. Yah, I know aboud dot steams in der house.'

"'Carl, you have a good, cold well. I guess you have five dollars to buy a little lumber to enclose that well; then you get two kerosene barrels.'

"'Ach, Got in himmel, dot kerosene parrels make der butter stink.'

"'You can burn them out with straw and take the stink away, Carl. Then you get a dozen tin cans made. It will cost you about $20 to get fixed right, and if you haven't enough money, I will lend you some.'

"Carl commenced to see the light. But his wife said to him, 'I dinks dot Yankee vas a humbug.' But Carl said, 'No. I don'd dinks he vas a humbug!' Carl was teachable.

"Well, we fixed up a nice place for the milk, where the windmill pumped water around the cans. I showed them the need of being scrupulously clean. I instructed them all about how to skim the milk right, and told them that when they had about 80 pounds of cream I would come down and churn it. Carl let me know, and I took down a little churn, and we made 20 pounds of butter.

"'Now, Carl, comes the business end! You must send this butter to the highest market and get the cash for it. The country storekeeper is no place to market your butter and get codfish for it. If you send it to the city, and it is good butter, you can always get a good price for it. If it is wrong, you will find it out. The country storekeeper half the time won't say that your butter is full of cabbage and steam and tobacco smoke odors. I will send your butter to Chicago.'

"'Mein Got! Send dot butter to Chicago, und ye vould be schwindled!'

"But I prevailed on them to let me send it to a commission house there, and when I sent the butter I wrote a letter to the dealer to sell the butter on its merits, and that it was the first fruits of an enlightened effort. It sold for 26 cents a pound, and when I took the check down the frau says, 'Carl, come in; you hear about dot butter.' And I gave him the check, told him that it was for his butter, and that it was good at the bank. He looked at it and then it dawned on him what it meant, and he grabbed his frau, and waltzed her around the room, shouting: 'I tell you, by Got, dot Yankee vas no humbug!'

"Today that little German is worth $50,000, and every little while there comes to me a package of butter, and on it is written by his daughter, 'To my Good Friend Who Showed Me How.'" (Applause.)

"It's no great trick," continued the governor, "for a man to be a lawyer, a banker or a merchant. These people interpret the laws that man makes. The agriculturist interprets the laws that God makes.

"Raphael was once asked to define art in a single sentence. He spent a month framing his answer, for it takes time to condense. Any one can elaborate. 'Art,' he said, 'consists in the ability to see.' Men must have an intelligent insight into what they are doing to be successful."

Speaking of the dairymen's association, he was pleased to see such activity. "The great point is in hanging together. It is not the soldier who stands out alone and says, 'I am almighty with my little musket,' that wins. There are two words that have always had more to do with the success of armies than anything else: 'Fall in!' The Wisconsin Dairymen's Association was organized in 1870 with 10 men. What we have done has been under the slogan, 'Fall in!' Today there are 3,000 creameries and cheese factories in our state."