252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jail., 



Judging from my own experience in creamery matters and in 

 selling milk, 1 think that the time will come when the farmers of 

 these valleys, who now send milk to New York will be forced for 

 their own safety to form dairy associations. From year to year 

 the railroads carry cheap milk from greater distances at about the 

 same rates as they do yours, and the competition becomes sharper. 

 The factory districts of New York and Pennsylvania are now 

 reached, and will supply vast quantities if the price paid will 

 warrant. 



Would it not be wise and prudent for you, who lead public 

 opinion, to take the initiative and devise some plan under which 

 groups of creamery associations, each representing a town, with 

 their factories built as needed, shall combine for one common 

 interest, so as to control your city sales, and the amount sold, and 

 take measures for elevating the standard of quality as well as the 

 quantity. 



Under some such system the milk which is sent to New York, 

 may be made to be precisely alike and always of one standard, 

 and furthermore that standard can in a few years be raised, just 

 as it has in Farmington, so as to be unapproachable by any other 

 like systematic effort. 



[The remainder of this address on methods of raising cream 

 was crowded out at the meeting by the pressure of other matters, 

 and will be revised for some other occasion.] 



Mr. Webb. Will the gentleman state again the date of the 

 establishment of the first creamery, and where ? 

 Mr. Norton. Near Rome, N. Y., in 1850. 



Mr. Webb. I have heard that assertion made a good many 

 times and have felt that I would like some opportunity to tell 

 what I know about it, and this is perhaps as appropriate an 

 occasion as I can find. In the early spring of 1844 I was in 

 St. Louis, engaged in the commission business, and received 

 a consignment of cheese from central Ohio. They weighed 

 from ninety to one hundred and fifteen pounds apiece, and 

 they were nice cheese. None of them weighed less tlian 

 ninety pounds. Having been raised on a farm in the East, 

 and having seen what we used to call pretty large cheese — 

 Goshen cheese — I asked the man from whom tlie consignment 

 came, " How do you make this cheese ? You must have a 



