TENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IX 395 



state will be devoted not to controversies among themselves but to 

 the encouragement and development not only to butter making but 

 the dairy interests in general. 



FALSELY MANIPULATING THE BABCOCK TEST. 



An extraordinary number of complaints have, during the past 

 year, come to this department to the effect that operators of the 

 Babcock test have been reading the test much higher than the facts 

 warrant, and have by this means been obtaining business upon an 

 unfair basis. Such complaints come to this office not only from 

 managers of local creameries and from cream buyers in competi- 

 tion, but they also come from managers of centralized creameries 

 who find their agents paying for much more butterfat than they 

 receive. Such inaccuracies in testing may be due to lack of knowl- 

 edge on the part of the operator of the test, but as a matter of 

 fact most operators of the test are very well informed as to the 

 method of its use and if they fail to get reasonably accurate re- 

 sults such faikire is by reason of carelessness or of willful manip- 

 ulation. 



The theory of the statute providing penalty for willful and 

 fraudulent manipulation of the Babcock test is that the operator 

 of the test shall be held responsible for the results which he gets, 

 and that if he does not get correct results it is because of intention 

 on his part to make them wrong. Considerable work has been done 

 investigating complaints of the kind referred to and several success- 

 ful prosecutions have been undertaken, though very great difficul- 

 ties stand in the way of inflicting penalties upon those who raise 

 the test and hence pay for more butterfat than is delivered. One 

 of the persons prosecuted was a cream hauler at Dumont. His 

 duties were to go over certain routes and collect cream from various 

 patrons on the routes and to sample cream so collected after weigh- 

 ing. It was discovered that the samples of cream delivered by 

 certain persons ahvays tested very high and that upon the whole 

 day's collection there was very considerable shortage. Later it' 

 w^as ascertained that a certain delivery of cream actually tested 

 less than 15 per cent, whereas the sample in possession of the cream 

 hauler tested 41 per cent. The cream hauler was arrested and 

 charged with falsely manipulating the Babcock test although he 



