No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 555 



In 1857, Jesse Williams and his sons on adjoining farms in Oneida 

 county, N. Y., brought their milk together to be made into cheese. 

 This is said to have been the birth of the factory system. In 1860, 

 the first factories started in Ohio and Wisconsin. In 1870, the first 

 creameries started on the gathered-cream plan. Then a man thought 

 out a better way of skimming milk and the world has paid a heavy 

 premium for that thought. In 1879, a De Laval cream separator was 

 exhibited at the London Dairy Show. The committee <m awards re 

 ported that "it was a very interesting invention, but would probably 

 not become practical in large dairies." The trouble was that the 

 egotistical Englishmen did not have keen enough thinking machines 

 to appreciate what the Swede had done for the world. The Swedes' 

 thought of a generation ago has developed into very interesting 

 history. In 1890, Dr. Babcock invented his famous milk test that 

 has pointed out unnecessary losses. Other chemists had been at 

 work on the problem of a simple and efficient milk test for several 

 years. I had the privilege of working in his laboratory as a student 

 at the time and I saw him develop the test that other men were 

 trying for, in about six weeks. But it took nearly fifty years of 

 patient training to do such a work in six weeks. Dr. Babcock has 

 greatly benefited the world and has won the gratitude of the people 

 of more than one country. The coin of the real is on a very sound 

 basis but it is not valuable enough to measure the appreciation of a 

 grateful people. The legislature of Wisconsin ordered a beautiful 

 medal struck and in the presence of notable men and fair women it 

 was presented to the man who cast his lot as a chemist with the 

 dairymen. 



William Dempster Hoard was a Wisconsin husbandman of cows. 

 He had cheese to sell, but the market was poor. There were four 

 different guages of railroad between Chicago and New York. Cheese 

 had to be transferred and was often weeks in transit and in the hot 

 weather its quality was greatly injured. There came in process of 

 time a single line of track and refrigerator cars. But the freight 

 rate on cheese was two cents a pound in box cars. Hoard went in 

 for a rate of one-fourth cent per pound in refrigerator cars. He had 

 to fight for it but he thought the problem through. His thought 

 gave Wisconsin an outlet for her product. He also thought out 

 other dairy problems. He established a newspaper in which to give 

 an outlet for thought on dairy problems. Did he make a mistake in 

 giving his best thought to dairying? It made him Governor of a 

 great Commonwealth, an international reputation and many people 

 rise up and call him blessed. 



These men have worked out the problems of their day. The dairy- 

 man need not, like Alexander, weep because there are no more worlds 

 to conquer, no more problems to solve. Let us look for a moment 

 at the business in the United States. There are 18,000,000 cows in 

 the countr}^ kept for milk. If placed in line, allowing 10 feet for each 

 animal, it would require only 1,574,000 to reach from New York to 

 San Francisco. With 18,000,000 coavs we can stretch 12 such lines 

 across the continent. There are enough to go once and a half times 

 around the earth at the Equator. The world values them at the 

 enormous sum of $000,000,000. Allowing one man to each cow, and 

 other men to make up and handle the products, we find that an 

 army of 2,000,000 people spend their entire thought and energies 

 in this line of business. 



