FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII 471 



on the trains throughout the tours and also co-operated in all the other 

 work. The individual dairymen have also sacrificed portions of their 

 time to educating their brother farmers in better methods and giving 

 them the benefit of valuable experience. The Dairy Department of Iowa 

 State College and the State Veterinary Department have also given a 

 great deal of assistance from time to time. 



ORGANIZING CO-OPERATIVE CREAMERIES. 



BY G. M. LAMBERT. 



There are very few dairy districts in the United States that have not, 

 at some time or other, been interested in operating or in organizing a 

 co-operative creamery. The idea the average small dairyman first possesses 

 is that the co-operative creamery will pay him considerably more for his 

 product than he has been able to get elsewhere. Almost every state in 

 the Union can furnish, as examples of failures, the wrecks of co-operative 

 efforts along this line. Now, these failures are not all due to the same 

 cause. Nevertheless, regardless of the cause, they stand as monuments 

 to failure, and, as such, they should be useful as a source of information. 



Briefly stated, the history of a nation is merely the biography of its 

 great men; and, the history of an industry is the life story of its successful 

 men. Education plays a most influential part in the changes which take 

 place in the methods of doing business. The true way for a man to be 

 practical is to take advantage of his own knowledge and all the knowledge 

 of other men that he can absorb. The time has come when the truth 

 about dairying can not easily be covered up, nor that which is falsely 

 pretended. The growth of the dairy industry demands that all dealings 

 must be based upon an honest understanding between contracting parties. 



WHY CBEAMERIES FAIL. 



Now, I shall not attempt to assign a reason why all those creameries 

 are closed. Instead, I shall simply enumerate and again repeat a few 

 of the things that are commonly known to cause creameries to fail. 

 Among these are the lack of sufficient number of cows to furnish the 

 desired amount of cream, poor organization, lack of proper co-operative 

 spirit, poor management and poor markets. 



To any mind there is but one word which exemplifies creamery success. 

 That one word is "efficiency." Modern philosophy teaches that nothing 

 is important that does not have a work to do. If a creamery has a work 

 to do, and exercises efficiency in doing it, it fulfills its mission. Other- 

 wise, it will, in time, give way to one that is efficient. At the present 

 time, a creamery may possess the strongest possible organization, but, if 

 its management, through a feeling of confidence, will lack vigilance and 

 neglect the smallest details, that creamery will gradually fall below its 

 high standard and, perhaps, fail. The finest machine made will go 

 wrong, and perhaps stop altogether, if something gets into its cogs; so 

 it is with the strongest creameries — ^when the cogs are blocked, trouble 

 ensues. 



