DAIRY ASSOCIATION. 329 



make good butter out of good milk. You men who are up against it 

 every dav know, and recognize the factSj and more than one butter- 

 maker has said to me in the past few months, "This is my position, what 



can I do?" 



Were an attempt made to define butter-making, as all too many of 

 our creameries are compelled to practice, it would read something like 

 this : "Butter-making is the art of making very good butter out of very 

 bad milk." 



A few years ago, when the financial standing of Kansas was not so 

 bright as it is now, one of our senators wrote a book called "The Way 

 Out," or more popularly it was known as "Pefifer's Way Out." The 

 butter-maker will rise to bless the man who will write a book pointing 

 to the butter-maker's way out. Let us pause to ask if there is a way 

 cut. Just as the dairy writers had everything fixed, and had settled 

 down to giving regular advice on how to improve the milk supply, most 

 of which was good and applicable, thinking no doubt that was the only 

 unsolved problem in the Dairy Arithmetic, there came up a cloud above 

 the horizon not bigger than a man's hand at first, but ft' grew and grew, 

 and grew until the storm was on, and into what had hitherto been a 

 peaceful dairy community, was thrust the farm separator. I say once 

 peaceful, for now the butter-maker backed by the creamery papers 

 opened war on the invader. The agent was there for business and he 

 at once proceeded to show the patrons how they could save money in all 

 kinds of ways, deliver their cream every other day, or three times a 

 week, and then if home creamery wouldn't pay it just ship it somewhere 

 else and get more money than ever for it. This is where we find our- 

 selves today, and we can justly consider "Where we are at." 



The proposition before some dairy communities may still be, shall 

 we adopt the hand separator, but with most of us in this section of the 

 dairy world, we can sympathize with "]\Iike," who was visited by the 

 physician when he had a very bad cold, the good doctor began to tell 

 Mike what he should have done to avoid the cold, he should have taken 

 one precaution and another, until Tuike could stand it no longer, and he 

 broke in, "To the divil with the larnin', ye can be givin' me no post- 

 mortem, it's me cold that's a troublin' me." 



And so it is, we are confronted with a fact and not a theory. That 

 fact is, poor cream from hand separators, and skimming stations. How 

 can we best handle it to get the best results? I do not wish to spend 

 time in discussing the work of educating the farmer by means of dairy 

 institutions, the dairy press and such similar lines of work. These agen- 

 cies are all very much alive, and are doing v.hat they can, to right the 



