526 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



These influences have led some people to believe that the business 

 men, and especially creamery managers, are making all the money, and 

 that to protect themselves they must buy hand separators and ship their 

 cream from fifty to two hundred miles away from home, where they do 

 not know the manager and have no means of finding out the financial 

 standing of the company to which they consign their product, and then 

 send their cash to Chicago or Minneapolis to some mail order house in 

 order to protect themselves from being swindled by some local estab- 

 lishment that has come into the community to help them pay taxes. 



Now I have had thirteen years' experience in operating creameries, 

 and during this time I have not been altogether ignorant of the success 

 or failure of my neighbors in my own and adjoining counties. Believing 

 1 know the facts, I will say that very few individual creameries make 

 money. I will venture the opinion that the majority of managers of 

 farmers' creameries are not sorry when they are not re-elected. 



The individual creamery is not an enemy to the dairy industry. It 

 was the individual creamery that put the idea into the heads of farmers 

 that they could build and operate creameries. 



Then where there are individual creameries, well and good, let the 

 farmers co-operate with them as fully as possible. But where there are 

 farmers' creameries, let the farmers co-operate and work for the ad- 

 vancement of their own industry and not ship their product past the 

 doors of their own establishment to build up for someone else that which 

 you need at home. 



To illustrate, we will suppose that the patrons of a co-operative 

 creamery are not fully satisfied. Perhaps strong competition has cut 

 up the territory and increased the expense of operating and lowered the 

 quality of the product. That is what too much competition does. Now, 

 if the partons of such a creamery wish to improve conditions and in- 

 crease their profits, do not look for a new creamery or some place to 

 ship your cream, but come together, and get all who are naturally tribu- 

 tary to that creamery to meet with the manager. If they will then agree 

 with the manager and each other that they will stick together and to that 

 creamery, and that they will do all in their power to improve the quality 

 of the product and in all just ways will promote the good of that particu- 

 lar creamery, I think the chances are sixteen to one that the manager 

 will be willing to give to them every benefit that they can secure to a 

 creamery through such co-operation. 



However, some men may be the one and not the sixteen, and may 

 not wish to co-operate with his patrons. Then I think the sooner he 

 gets out of the business the better, and the next best plan is to give your 

 support to one who will. But co-operate on the principals of co-opera- 

 tion. 



That man is said to be a public, benefactor who causes two blades 

 of grass to grow where there was but one. It is equally true in creamery 

 economics and co-operation that a man is a curse to any dairy commun- 

 ity who causes a second creamery to be built where there is but terri- 

 tory to support one. True economy consists in using to the best ad- 



