208 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



a year as that of any over attained for a like period b\- an\' private 

 dair\' contributing. 



2. The net income from a given number of cows has been greater 

 b\- this system than ever before obtained ; more mone}' from the 

 same cmvs, and all labor and expense saved. 



8. Some farmers claim that they get through this system, more 

 money per inch for their cream than they used to get per pound for 

 their butter, and also that more butter is made for them at the fac- 

 tory in a given time, than they ever succeeded in making at home 

 from the same cows. 



These advantages, thoronghl}- vouched for, are more than ever 

 was claimed for the system, in advance, bj- its warmest friends. 

 As an example of what a general adoption of this factory plan would 

 do for a whole section, I have made some figures on the count}- of 

 Franklin, Mass., a county whose butter, exclusively made by farm 

 dairying, has long had an exceptionall}- good reputation in the 

 Boston market. Its product there commands the A'er}- highest price 

 for dairy grades. During the year 1881 that count}- sent 421 tons 

 of butter to the Boston market. This was all shipped and sold in 

 small packages as dairy butter, and averaged 27 cents a pound for 

 the year, or a total of $227,330 returned to the farmers of that 

 county for butter. The butter from the factory at Hatfield, a town 

 adjoining Franklin count}', with same class of stock and pasturage 

 and care, sold during the same 3'ear at an average of 32 cents — five 

 cents per pound more. Now, if the whole product of Franklin 

 county had been made on the factory plan and sold like the Hatfield 

 creamery butter — as it might have been — the total sum realized 

 would have been $269,440, or a gain to the county of $42,100 in 

 the 3'ear, on their butter crop, — or rather on that part of it sold in 

 Boston. This would have been a right snug little sum to add to 

 the 3'early revenues of a small agricultural count3'. Even if this 

 added sum had gone to factor3' men instead of to farmers, it would 

 have been a direct gain to the count}', but in fact, the cow owners 

 are partly, if not wholly, the faetor3' owners, so that the3' would 

 have been more or less benefitted by the added revenue. 



This co-operative system of butter making, and particularl3' on the 

 Fairlarab plan, ma3' be advocated on two strong grounds : First, as 

 a groait lightening of household labor on the farm ; second, as a 

 business improvement, a paying thing to do as far as dollars and 

 cents are concerned. 



