After the June exhibit the Canadian people were smart enough not try to show any cheese until October, when the weather was cool and they could have everything in the very best condition. In making their cheese the patrons were all instructed to exercise every precaution in caring for their milk, and the makers of course took every possible pains in the manufacture; then the buyers that were handling the product of the factory selected from this carefully made cheese one vat, which in their judgment was the best made, and these cheese were sent to Ingersol or Montreal, which ever point was most convenient, and there examined by three experts; after they had passed their judgment the ones which they considered best were examined by Professor Robertson, and he decided which should finally be forwarded to Chicago. The cheese which would not show a score of ninety-five or better in this thorough examination was not allowed a place in their exhibit. The idea that Canada was working for in this exhibit was to show England that they made a better keeping cheese than we did. They went about it in a businesslike way to prove that the point was well taken. The large cheese which they made and exhibited at a great expense was one of the drawing cards of the Exposition, and was a paying advertisement in that it called the attention of the people to Canadian dairy products, and so in obtaining the exhibit for consumption. As I have told you they spared no expense to secure the best specimen possible. You can readily see, that handled in this way, their exhibit could not help being very fine, and it certainly was. We attempted to do something of this kind during the month of September, although the cheese were not judged in any such manner, but we had a fine exhibit, over one-half of which scored ninety-five or better, and if we could have had them judged without their being exposed to the excessive heat in which they stood for two days waiting to be passed on by the judges, we should have made a very much better showing. In the month of October we did not succeed in having much of an exhibit for the reason that a large number of our best makers did not think that we had been treated fairly in the previous months scoring and so would not exhibit any cheese. Another very serious drawback to our obtaining a high score in cheese was that the committee of awards made a class of home-trade cheese, of which we have a very large number manufactured in the State of New York. When the cheese arrived in Chicago the judges claimed that under the system of score-cards, as established by the bureau of awards, they must judge those cheese by the same standard for texture that they used in judging the shipping cheese, which you all know very well would be fatal to a high score for that class of goods. They claimed to make some allowances on this point, but it was not nearly as great as it should have been. Nearly one-half of our exhibit was made up, both in September and October, of cheese of this class. The low scoring of this class of cheese made from such a standpoint is no injury to them. The fact remains that we have a large and growing trade for this class of goods, and if we should place on the market a solid cheese in which there has been a sufficient amount of moisture assimilated so that it will not be hard, and so that it will hold its flavor, then we have a cheese that will please the great body of cheese-eating people in this country, and that is the trade that we want to cater to. There is a time in the hot weather when we make considerable more cheese than the home trade can use, and if we are to hold a place in the export trade our cheesemakers should take hold of the facts brought out at Chicago and bear in mind that if we are to hold our place in the English markets we must make a dry, close-textured cheese. Canada will do it, and they will hold the market against us unless we meet this demand. The important lesson of this exhibit is that mere numbers will |