312 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The dairy butter manufactured in Iowa surely tends toward lower- 

 ing the average quality of our butter. It generally has to be renovaterl 

 before it can be disposed of. It is the duty of every creamery manager 

 and butter-maker to have his creamery operated so successfully that the 

 farmers realize that they can not afford to sell their butter to the stores 

 for from ten to fifteen cents per pound. Iowa is no State for renovated 

 dairy butter. It is pure butter of a high standard of excellence we want. 

 Iowa, the greatest butter State in the Union, can not afford to have its 

 butter sent to New York as renovated butter or as the lowest grade of 

 creamery butter that has to be sent to England where it is sold to th;^ 

 poorest classes of people who can not afford to buy good butter. 



Finally. I shall mention another cause of poor butter. There ar.? 

 still a few incompetent men who occupy positions as butter-makers in 

 Iowa creameries. Some of them have never even given their creamery 

 a thorough scrubbing. They do not understand the necessity of cleanli- 

 ness. They know nothing about milk or how to care for it. A starter 

 has never been inside of their creamery and they ripen their cream 

 In the same way as did the old lady from their home village fifteen 

 years ago. In fact, all they know about creamery work is that they 

 know how to start and stop the machinery providing everything is in 

 running order. If such a man is disinterested in his work he should 

 seek some other occupation. If he is 'interested in the dairy work, but 

 simply lacks information and training, then the dairy school will be the 

 proper place for him. This is also the proper place for any butter- 

 maker when he finds that he is getting behind and besides that he should 

 aim to keep himself informed by reading dairy papers and experiment 

 station reports. 



It is quite natural to blame the butter-maker whenever a creamery is 

 kept in bad condition. The proper one to blame in most cases is the 

 manager, as in the first place he should never hire an imcompetent man. 

 He simply does so that he may save from ten to fifteen dollars per 

 month. He does not realize that by doing so he is losing one hundred 

 dollars per month. Some of our Iowa butter-makers are working under 

 rather discouraging conditions. The average wages paid our butter- 

 makers does not reach sixty dollars per month, and even at that figure 

 some of the directors are confinually worrying about how they will be 

 able to reduce his wages. They do not appreciate their butter-maker's 

 work, no matter how well and skillfully it has been performed. Th-B 

 result often is that the same creamery hires a cheaper man. He has 

 perhaps been employed as can washer in some creamery. He know:! 

 nothing about butter-making and as a result the quality of the butter 

 from that creamery is impaired. A seventy-five or a hundred-dollar-man 

 is a great deal more profitable than a cheap man. and unless good men 

 are employed it will be impossible to keep up our butter standard. 



Even if the creamery has secured a good butter-maker, there are 

 often difficulties for him to overcome, ov/ing to local conditions. In 

 that case we should have experts employed by the State that could assist 

 in solving the difficulties. The State has so far appointed one man. and 

 we do appreciate the fact that they have appointed a man as capable 



