Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

490 HENRY BAIRD FA V ILL
difficulties and primary among these difficulties is getting
into action the obviously good but dormant motives that are
behind the country community. It is the County Agent
or somebod}^ corresponding to him, that the National
Education Association must look to for the effective touch,
just as it is absolutely proved that the Agricultural Experiment
Stations must look to the County Agents for the final
translation and interpretation of the results of their work
in the minds of the people.
For there is no class in better position to appreciate the
very essential principles of living conditions, good hygiene,
sanitary things involved in their operations,
produce their milk,
the way they
the way they rear and keep their animals,
the way they feed them, and the way they keep their
animals from disease. All of these questions concentrate
their minds on health and wholesomeness. That is the
kind of a community which is going to make the greatest
advance in regard to sanitation and health.
There is another side of this dairy question which I
must call attention to. You would think from the fact
that everyone uses milk in some degree or other, that everybody
uses butter in some degree and a good many people
use cheese,
that the understanding of the people as to the
You
value of dairy products was pretty well established.
would think that they knew about this value and that they
are probably in harmony with that situation.
Well, nothing
is farther from the truth than that. So far as the use of
dairy products is concerned, the people of this country have
not yet crossed the threshold of intelligence. Everybody
uses butter, perhaps not so much as he ought to, and perhaps
this is an important question. The people, however,
that use milk, do not use milk in one per cent of the population
as freely as they could use milk profitably from the
standpoint of health of their families.
People do not understand about milk. It is a matter of
investigation in my direction and I know that people are