and have repaid to the Government every dollar that was lent to them. There is no part of agriculture that is not susceptible to the same kind of improvement.
Here is another instance on a larger scale. The province of Ontario is noted for the products of its cheese factories and creameries. It made great advancement in quality and in quantity as between the two census years 1891 and 1901. The province of Quebec had not advanced so far in cooperative dairying; but a beginning had been made in organizing its cheese factories and creameries into syndicates. The syndicate was a group of cheese factories or butter factories employing the services of a travelling instructor. In 1892 a dairy school for the province of Quebec was started by the provincial authorities; and the Department of Agriculture of the Federal Government at Ottawa authorized me, as Commissioner, to turn in $3,000 a year of federal money to help the dairy school at St. Hyacinthe—to promote dairying and agriculture by means of education. We did not call it education. That might have been an unconscious slap at the Constitution of Canada, which, by the British North America Act, is said to reserve all legislation affecting education to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Provincial Legislatures. We began by giving short courses. Some of the wiseacres said it was foolish to think of imparting any education worthy of the name in a two weeks' course. However, we made it a rule that only students should be admitted who had worked for one year in a cheese factory or butter factory. We had neither the time nor the money to devote to those floating atoms who, in an indefinite way, wanted a college education for dairying. No one could get the course at St. Hyacinthe unless he had previously had one year of practical experience. These were the very people we wanted to help. These were they who needed help. Then, the provincial authorities went further in organizing the factories into syndicates. No one was allowed to become a syndicate instructor unless he had taken the course, or courses, of instruction at
