104 Thibty-Fifth Annual Report of the 



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such a patron becomes, as one creamery man said, "so d inde- 

 pendent you can't do anything with him." That is a time wlicn in- 

 dependence becomes a menace so to speak. 



Now my experience as a business man is in the retail milk 

 business and we have competition there, lots of it, but it has 

 been my experience ever since I started never to say a word or 

 do an act to injure a competitor; never to seek a com])(itilor's 

 customer. If customers come to me to seek my product I am 

 glad to supply them, but if a competitor is short of milk and 

 we have milk w^e supply him and there is a common good feeling 

 as the result and in five years' time we have been able to raise 

 the price of milk one cent a quart, we can shrink our sales 20 

 per cent and get just as much money as we could five years ago, 

 of course that is 20 per cent, less with the cost of raw material. 



O. Got a milk trust? A. No milk trust, it is just com- 

 mon good feeling. If you creamery fellows and cheese factory 

 fellows would hit it off together a little more and get better 

 acquainted it would be better for you. 



Reddick : — -There is a good deal in what Prof. Cooley says. 

 It does seem as though something might be done to ov(Tcome 

 the intense rivalry of the creameries. Now, we are talking of 

 licensing the factories, and if we do that the factories will have 

 to come up to certain regulations or they will not be given a 

 license. A great many think that it will have some effect to in- 

 jure the butter factories, and it will some of the smaller ones. I 

 do not know how much there is in that argument, but so far as 

 the Province of Quebec is concerned I think we shall license 

 the butter and cheese factories and then I think before long the 

 apparatus of the Babcock test will have to be inspected just as 

 scales, weights and measures are inspected now, one is as neces- 

 sary as the other and rather more so. We have discussed this 

 question, the licensing of factories, for two years, and n^Av the 

 only trouble is that public opinion probably is not quite rtrong 

 enough to warrant taking it up. The government cannot take 

 up a thing of this kind until there is strong enough ])ublic 

 opinion behind it to support it, so that our present work on that 

 hne is one of education. 



Mr. Albree: — I came to Vermont to-day from Concord, 

 Mass., for two reasons. One was to meet certain breeders of 

 stock in Vermont from whom I have bought cattle and paid 

 $100 per head, and second to hear Prof. Cooley from my own 

 state whom I have never heard before. One practical lesson I 

 would like to bring to the Dairymen's Association in relation to 

 the hundred dollar cow. We have bought her and she is the 

 cheapest cow we own. Two years ago I purchased from Mr. 

 Winslow of Brandon the ten best cows he had in his herd and 



