TENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IX 393 



education and to generally encourage the creamery and dairy busi- 

 ness, but it cannot be expected that the state will do that which 

 patrons and to assist them not only in producing the very best 

 quality of milk, but also to assist them in producing increased 

 quantities of it and such policy has been found uniformly success- 

 ful. There seems no reason to suppose that the same policy vigor- 

 ously carried out will not very greatly improve bath the quality and 

 the quantity of the milk and cream produced. 



Another bill which did not become a law was a bill providing 

 authority for owners of cream cans registering a distinctive name 

 or mark and providing penalty for the stealing of them or for their 

 use by any one not their owner. The central creameries usually 

 own the cans in which the cream is shipped and they report con- 

 siderable losses of cans and considerable confusion arising from 

 the use of their cans by unauthorized persons, sometimes for pur- 

 poses other than transporting cream. It is evident that such losses 

 must be borne by the producers whose products are handled and 

 that to lessen such losses would be for the benefit of the producers 

 as well as the manufacturer of the products. Such a law is already 

 on the statute books to cover about all returnable containers except 

 cream cans, and a cream can is the most expensive returnable con- 

 tainer now used in this state. The bill was passed by the Senate 

 but was lost on vote in the House. There are about forty cream- 

 eries in this state that do a strictly centralizing business, that is, 

 receive their cream largely from a distance by rail or other con- 

 veyance, and there are 77 others that receive more or less of their 

 product by rail, so that such a statute as proposed would affect a 

 considerable number of our creameries. 



The statistical tables given elsewhere in this report show that the 

 creamery butter manufactured in this state during the year ending 

 July 1, 1909, amounts to 101,907,316 pounds, which was made from 

 413,000,000 pounds of milk and 279,000,000 poimds of cream— all 

 of these figures being reported by 512 creameries. The creamery 

 list shows a larger number than this, there being 29 skim 

 stations in the state, the product of which is, of course, reported 

 from their respective creameries. It is estimated that approximat- 

 ely 18,000,000 pounds of butter is made from milk and 83,000,000 

 pounds from cream. Of this butter the creameries report 10,380,- 

 497 pounds consumed at home and a little more than 90,000,000 

 shipped outside the state. 



