386 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



amounts, and with them he pays his running expenses. When he sells his 

 hogs or cattle he has money to pay off larger bills. The dairy business 

 is a cash business. It enables the farmer to look the store-keeper in the 

 face when he meets him, because he doesn't owe him money. The dairy 

 business makes for more wealth, better farms, better buildings, for pianos 

 and top buggies, and education for the children, for general prosperity 

 for the community, for better times for the farmer and his wife, and every- 

 body with whom they come in contact. There is no line of agriculture 

 that is more certain and safe and profitable than the dairy business. 



QUALITY IN DAIRY PRODUCTS. 



(Hon. Ed. H. Webster, Cbief of Dairy Division, Washington, D. C.) 



I have heard so many sides of the dairy business discussed since I 

 have been here that I feel you are pretty well on to the situation and 

 don't need much outside help. However, there is one matter which has 

 been discussed only in a general way, and that is how to get quality 

 in our dairy products. I believe you will agree with me that that is a 

 most important thing to you as the producer of milk, to you as agent 

 who is buying the milk, and to you as a manufacturer of butter. The 

 greatest question that presents itself to you is the matter of quality, and 

 you cannot let it go by without serious consideration. In dairy work 

 there are a few principles we must not forget that will tend to either 

 make for success or failure, so far as quality is concerned. We see a 

 great deal in the papers nowadays about conditions that surround the 

 milk supply of our cities. By some expensive buildings are being put up, 

 and thousands of dollars are being put into plants for the purpose of pro- 

 ducing a pure article of milk. The idea seems to be that all this is nec- 

 essary in order to produce a pure article. It is seemingly forgotten that 

 the production of pure milk does not depend on expensive buildings and 

 machinery, but that it all depends on the man producing this milk. The 

 milk distributor, the butter maker or the cheese maker can do nothing; 

 he is absolutely tied, unless the farmer will produce for him a first-class 

 article to work with. A man can go into our butter factories and make 

 butter out of cream a week old, but he cannot make good butter — that 

 kind of butter is hard to sell. 



I have been told all around by creamery men that one of the greatest 

 questions that is coming to the dairy business, that is up to the dairy- 

 man, is the question of quality in butter. If our creameries can get a 

 good quality of cream that will make good quality of butter, which will 



