30   Report of Wisconsin Dairy and Food Commissioner


and contests for honor; contests for amusement and contests for
education; contests innumerable of innumerable kinds. In reality,
the Great Columbian Fair at Chicago, in commemoration of Columbus'
discovery, the Great World's Fair at St. Louis, commemorating the
Louisiana purchase, the Great World's Fair at San Francisco in
commemoration of the completion of the Panama Canal, were each con-
tests, international in scope, in display of international achievements.
War is a contest that evokes the most savage traits of man and
brings into the world unspeakable misery. Fighting is a contest
that is apt to leave both parties injured in both body and mind, but
in contests that bring out the best there is in man, even though but
one can gain the coveted emblem of supremacy, all experience by
their efforts in winning a place for their product in the highest class,
that exhilaration and exultation of mind that always results from
work well and skilfully and lovingly done. Such contests leave the
world better rather thpn worse.
In some of the famous Olympic games, the winner received as a
reward a wreath from the sacred olive tree and was publicly pro-
claimed victor, an object of ambition to the noblest and wealthiest
of the Greeks. The victor became a marked man in his state. He
was considered to have conferred upon himself and his family ever-
lasting glory. Ovations and many substantial honors were bestowed
on him. His praises were sung by eminent poets and often his statue
was erected in the Sacred Grove of Jupiter at Olympia.
Contest implies earnest struggle for superiority. These contests
of butter makers, in and of the respective states, are contests of
skill and effort without limitation. The conditions of these contests
are such, that the material from which butter is manufactured or
produced may be obtained from selected cows from selected herds
of selected patrons of selected creameries, the cattle fed by the most
highly trained and skillful feeders, the milk drawn with most scrupu-
lous care under the most perfect sanitary conditions, the cream sep-
arated by scientifically trained workmen, cared for and delivered to
the creamery under the most ideal conditions known to science and
art, cared for and ripened by men most highly trained and skilled
in their art, and the resultant butter forwarded under the greatest
possible safeguards so as to be in the most nearly perfect condition
at the time of scoring. These are contests for the realization of the
highest attainable ideals, under the highest attainable conditions and
by the highest attainable knowledge and skill in workmanship, the
hope being that some approximation of these exalted ideals, efforts
and practices, may be extended to the every day production of com-
mercial creamery butter. The extent to which this hope is realized
measures the value of the greatest prize or reward of all those offered.
Such contests, to the extent that Paul's exhortation and limitation
prevail, that we "covet the best gifts," should prove beneficial.
I have read the mythical story, that when Jupiter offered the cro*n
of immortality to the one who had been most serviceable to mankind,
the court of Olympus was crowded with competitors. There came the