This page has been validated.
390
CANADIAN AGRICULTURE

the St. Hyacinthe Dairy School. During the first year (1892-1893) 214 students took the course; the next year there were 268 students; in the third year 328, and so on. The people of the province of Quebec were generally supposed to be far behind those of Ontario in education and cooperation as applied to dairying and agriculture generally. The returns in the census of 1901 revealed some of the results of the educational campaign. Ontario made great progress, but Quebec made much more. The following table is indicative in part of what was accomplished:


Value of Product from Cooperative Butter and Cheese Factories as returned in the Two Census Years 1901 and 1891.
    Ontario.         Quebec.    
Value in 1900       $14,706,303 $12,261,898
Value in 1890  7,569,338  2,918,527
Increase $7,136,965  $9,343,371


The development of this industry, which has increased the desire and capacity of the rural populations to cooperate in other ways, is traceable directly to education and guidance towards organization. I believe that similar means would be equally effective in the whole range of agriculture, from the cultivation of the soil to the preparation and shipping of products to ultimate markets.

In 1899 I arranged a competition among Canadian boys and girls in the selecting by hand of large heads of wheat and oats. Each competitor gathered 100 of the best heads he or she could find, and forwarded them to me. One hundred dollars in cash prizes were provided, and awarded to the successful competitors. In 1900 Sir William C. Macdonald, of Montreal, gave me the sum of $10,000 to be distributed in prizes to the successful boys and girls living on Canadian farms who entered into a