SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII. 307 



at Montreal is usually f. o. b. cars nearest station, while the New York 

 quotation includes freight, commission and cartage. 



The quality of our Iowa butter should be so uniform that it could 

 be shipped abroad at any time when their markets were higher than 

 ours. We are making in Iowa today poorer butter than we made ten 

 years ago. The quality of cream furnished to many of our creameries 

 today is a disgrace to any civilized people. There has not been a week 

 during the past season but what I have had from one to six letters 

 lying on my desk, asking for first-class buttermakers at wages ranging 

 from $60 to $125 per month. What is the reason for this clamor? It 

 is the poor quality of cream that these buttermakers are compelled to 

 accept, from which it is impossible for any maker, no matter how 

 skilled he is, to turn out a first-class article. I tell you my heart ached 

 for some of these buttermakers who have had to resign their positions 

 through no fault of their own, but from conditions imposed upon them. 

 There is no workman, no matter how skilled he is, that can produce 

 flrst-class goods from inferior, low grade material. Then why should 

 we expect buttermakers to make good butter from over-ripe or rotten 

 cream? 



The Department of Agriculture, as many of you know, has taken 

 up the system formerly used by the National Convention, that of 

 scoring butter and sending the criticisms to the makers. They have 

 placed an expert buttermaker in New York and one in Chicago whose 

 duty it is to score butter when desired, and offer suggestions to the makers 

 as to improving the quality. This method has no doubt accomplished 

 some good, but it does not go far enough. You cannot purify a stream 

 by working at the lower end when its source of contamination is at the 

 head. There is no one who understands the faults of the butter better 

 than the maker who is battling with the adverse conditions. 



The dairy schools have been for years training men to the best of 

 their ability, but these men are unable to cope with conditions as they 

 exist at the present time. I think I am safe in saying that from seventy- 

 five to ninety per cent of the buttermakers of this country can produce 

 good butter if the raw material is right. They may not be able to pro- 

 duce 97 or 98 butter, but they can produce 93 or 94 butter and the 

 maker who can manufacture a uniform quality of this kind has no 

 trouble in holding his position. 



Our centralized plants have endeavored, during the past year, to meet 

 these conditions by grading their cream 1, 2 and 3, and paying according 

 to quality, but the avaricious greed of man, and the keen competition 

 that exists, have rendered this grading almost useless. The result is 

 that intelligence and sanitary methods are practically discarded by 

 many of our producers. Why they have made a third-class grade I 

 cannot understand, as butter made from such cream should have no 

 place in our markets. 



Many blame the centralized plants for present conditions. The central- 

 izers are like many of the rest of us; they have endeavored to set too 

 swift a pace. "Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Ex- 

 tremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates 

 obstructions for itself." So the centralizer is baffled just as much as the 



