form. Our farm hasn't changed nearly as much as many
others, but great-grandfather simply wouldn't understand
what has happened in farming, the great cost of it, the
,Whines we need to farm profitably at all. He loved new
oachines, but I expect he would say we've gone too far.
Nle wouldn't understand that the number of cows in Wis-
consin is decreasing so dramatically, or why the number
of farms in the state is decreasing every year. I could
tell him why, of course; too many people are like he was,
they don't want to be tied down to seven-days-a-week
work on a dairy farm. And I'm sure he wouldn't under-
stand when I told him how much better the cows have
become. Fewer cows, more milk.
    Oleomargarine and butter have always fought a
deadly duel in Wisconsin. Special taxes on oleo were
started in 1886. The tax climbed and climbed but
oleo still flourished. Eventually oleo won, but it was
a prolonged battle. A 1910 statement about oleo:
   Price of oleo-The sworn statements before the New York
Commission proved that it costs no more than six cents, and
yet we find it in the state of Wisconsin from $75,000 to
$100,000 worth a week of the stuff pouring into this State
and men paying the highest kind of prices for it and being
defrauded and cheated. The argument that it is for the poor
is a humbug, for nothing under the sun is a greater lie than
that statement.
   In reference to oleo-We hear a vast amount of silly talk
with regard to this counterfeit. I hear men constantly talking
and saying that they would rather have it than poor butter.


Well, who wouldn't rather have peace and quietude in the
family than to have a poor, scolding, ugly wife to live with,
but did any man ever hear of that being used as an argument
against a good woman? On the contrary, it is one of the
arguments today for good wifehood and good motherhood.
    Now poor butter always advertises itself; no man needs
to be deceived thereby; whereas a counterfeit and an imi-
tation is always a deception and always men are deceived
thereby.

                 FOLK WISDOM
     The farming people brought to Wisconsin many
lessons in folk wisdom, such wisdom transcending
either butter or oleo.
     Our ancestors recognized the truth of the say-
ing, "Wrong possessions do not last," whether they
first heard it in German, "Unrecht gut gedeihet
nicht," or translated in Wisconsin or New York into
"What comes over the devil's back goes under his
belly." Also they thought it worthwhile to bring
with them from the East such custom-made warn-
ings and advice as "Listeners never hear any good
of themselves," or "A dog that will fetch a bone will
carry a bone," or "What is spoken vanishes, what is
written remains," so "Don't write and fear no man."
     Pioneer times demanded perseverance and pa-
 tience, but so does life everywhere. "Leg over leg
 the dog goes to Dover" may have originated in Eng-


Meanwhile, a farmer had to get his hogs to market.


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