316 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



One of my earliest recollections of the creamery business is that of 

 complaints of creamery managers and operators of the poor quality of 

 millv received, they said the farmer didn't strain the millv, that he let 

 it get sour, that the irresponsible cow ate bad tasting weeds, that cans 

 were sometimes not too clean. We have always heard the same com- 

 plaint about milk and cream and we always will for the reason that the 

 ideal is never reached, and until it is very nearly approached we shall 

 never be satisfied and will continue to make complaints. Once In a 

 while some fellow gets hold of an exceptionally bad case and alleges 

 that it is an example exactly like all the other cases that he has never 

 seen. He gets the one small fact so close to his eye that he can't see 

 anything else at all. I am one of those who believe that even in the 

 quality of hand separator cream great advancement has been made. I 

 have reports made by the assistant commissioners in the last twelve 

 months of the score of butter in 391 separate creameries, and only 39 or 

 10 per cent of them are below 90, and in only thirteen of these cream- 

 eries did the assistant commissioners report any really bad cream re- 

 ceived. The receivers of butter in the markets report improvement in 

 the quality and creameries report increase in the prices they now re- 

 ceive from a constantly more critical market. 



But whatever measure of success has been attained, the reason nack of 

 it is the main thing after all. The first and best reason- is that the state is 

 adapted to the dairy business. The soil, the climate, the crops, the people 

 are all particularly adapted to this industry, and while natural conditions 

 are not so hard in Iowa as to compel our people to milk cows, yet there is 

 no place in the world where the returns for intelligence and effort put into 

 the dairy business may be so great, so that notwithstanding the difficulties 

 incident to the development of a business so widely scattered as is the 

 dairy business and notwithstanding the changes of systems that have oc- 

 curred in the last ten years, yet natural conditions have been and are 

 such that great progress has been made so that now the creamery system 

 is established upon a firm basis. The second and not less important reason 

 for success that has been attained and for success that still remains for 

 us in the future is the fact that the state has such a loyal army of boos- 

 ters. It is true that we have had our differences of opinion in regard to 

 hand separators and the shipping of cream, and that we have not always 

 agreed about some other things, but nevertheless the dairy school, the dairy 

 papers, the dairy officials, the salesmen of dairy and creamery appliances 

 and supplies, the buttermakers and the creamery managers have been 

 working together all the time, not wholly for their own selfish interests, 

 but for the good of the industry as a whole. If there has been once in a 

 while one in the ranks who was inclined to hang back he has been quickly 

 supplanted, and in the main -every one has been helping everybody else 

 and doing all the work he could for progress. 



The dairy business of the state has but one enemy outside the ranks, 

 and it alv/ays will have that one. A little outside opposition will be 

 good for us. The success of the future depends upon the continuation 

 of the harmony that has existed in the years gone by, it depends upon 

 every one of us individually and collectively and in proportion to our 



