328 MISSOURI AGRICULTURE REPORT. 



butter fat is concerned, and I have been taught that it is absolutely cor- 

 rect, but I think it is abused in the minds of people sometimes who are 

 selling butter fat, and there seems to be abroad an idea that there is a 

 varia.tion in this test, and I hear all over this country a good deal of 

 talk about the value of cream as bought by different markets for dif- 

 ferent purposes, and I hear a great deal of stress put on this test, and 

 I am led to believe, as a conscientious worker in the interest of dairying, 

 that it might become a deplorable thing. You never hear a man talk 

 about taking his corn to one place because it weighs more. A man does 

 not ship his stock to Chicago instead of St. Louis because it weighs 

 more. He does not exchange one pair of scales for another because cf 

 a difference in the scales, and if the Babcock test determines absolutely 

 the butterfat value of cream or milk, there is not a particle of difference 

 what test they use if they know that the test will be honestly made. So 

 the question ought to be done away with where a man will get the best 

 test. There is but one test, and any man who would willingly and know- 

 ingly over-rate the butterfat in milk, would under-rate it also, and the 

 one is just as dishonest as the other and we ought to be settled on this 

 proposition by an eminent authority and I want Mr. Glover to tell us 

 w^hether or not we can rely on the Babcock test. 



Mr. Glover — I think I must be living on the reputation of my illus- 

 trious teacher, Governor Hoard. 



That idea that goes out in regard to the Babcock test being in- 

 accurate, being unfit to determine the value of our dairy products, is 

 wrong. The Babcock test, while not absolute, any more than our big 

 hay scales are absolute, is accurate enough for all practical purposes. 

 We can measure a load of hay accurately within 4 or 5 pounds and no- 

 body would question its correctness. The Babcock test is not absolute. 

 Nothing is absolute except mathematics. There is a chance for the man 

 making the test to err. All human beings make mistakes. But for all 

 practical purposes and doing justice to the patrons as well as to the 

 creamery man, there is no better test than the Babcock test. It does 

 full justice to Ihe creamery and full justice to the dairy farmer, but 

 rogues have been working since the world started to move, and there 

 are rogues yet living to manipulate the Babcock test, under-rating it and 

 over-rating it as the case might warrant. I knew a large creamery con- 

 cern, which I am glad to say is no longer in existence because of their 

 methods of doing business. They would promise farmers who were 

 taking their milk to another creamery and receiving a 3.4 test, that if they 

 would bring their milk to them, they would receive a 3.8, test. The 

 dai'ymen living on the dividing line between the two creameries would 

 get a higher test, while the dairA'mcn living nearer this creamery would get 



