TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI 539 



CREAMERIES IN THE EARLY DAYS 



By M. J. Cort 



It was in the year 1S76 when I first began to see the necessity of doing 

 something in the creamery and butter business. I had heard of Iowa's 

 first creamery at or near Manchester, which was put in operation in 

 1872. At that time I was in business in Zwingle, 14 miles south of Du- 

 buque. We were taking in lots of butter in trade for merchandise, which, 

 when mixed together, caused it to contain a variety of colors. We bought 

 a hand butter worker and paid ?5.00 for a recipe which taught us how 

 to re-work butter ready for the market. We handled our butter in this 

 manner for a couple of years. In the spring of 1879, the Iowa Dairy 

 School was started, and from it we got what information we could regard- 

 ing the Dairy Business. At this time we were paying 8 cents a pound 

 for our butter. 



I never will forget the day I took seven tubs to Dubuque and Mr. 

 Walker, a commission man, who said, "Cort. all that I can pay you for 

 that butter will be 4 cents a pound — no commission." I gave him four 

 tubs and shipped the other three to a firm in New York City. 



We had read of various individual creameries over the country. N. S. 

 Andrews had sold his plant at Baldwin, west of Maquoketa. I drove down 

 and made him a proposition to build a creamery at Zwingle, and agreed 

 to furnish him the power from our steam mill for $100 a year. He accepted 

 and came up and started tlie creamery in the year 1879. 



Our people never received less than 12 tq 1.5 ce:'-its thereafter. 

 Creameries began to spring np all over the state, mostly individual 

 plants. There was no way of testing cream at that time, but Andrew's 

 tester was later invented. It was composed of a common 14 quart, 20 

 cent, wooden pail, which contained some 6 inch bottles. He succeeded 

 in selling 15 of these testers for $100.00 each. Later he invented the 

 Conqueror Test churn, and then moved to Dubuque and began manu- 

 facturing it. In three years he cleaned up $25,000, and in 1887 I quit 

 the store business and commenced working for him. 



At that time Iowa had 449 creameries and 52 cheese factories still 

 mostly individual or stock company plants. Then it was that testers of 

 all kinds began to come into use. We had the Conqueror, the Short 

 Method, the Bennling, Centrifugal, Prof. Patrick's, the Cochrass, and the 

 Babcock, while the various acid and casein tests were also being used. 

 About three months after the Babcock tester was put on the market, 

 creameries all over the country voted to use it. In fact, the whole world 

 began using it along about 1891. Mr. Babcock donated it to the world free 

 to use and the co-operative movement began in earnest. 



