FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IV. 243 



I think inspection, competent inspection, sufficient inspection will cover 

 the defects, or remedy them, that the license system is supposed to cover. 

 Without competent inspection your license system is bound to fail. 



In fact, the license system might be the source of a great deal of irrita- 

 tion. Not only that, but we might have a little graft in connection with it, 

 because recommendations of one man in giving a license to either a maker 

 or an operator would subject him to some idea of favoritism, possibly. 



Supposing that one of you gentlemen had been running a creamery for a 

 number of years; you had paid high prices for milk and no one had been 

 complaining about your butter. Supposing the inspector refused to give 

 you a licence and wanted you to shut up business; would you submit to 

 that? Would you go to court and get a trial? Could you get a jury that 

 would put you out of business, a jury composed of neighbors and friends? 

 I doubt it, and in my opinion the license system where it has been tried, 

 particularly in some places, notably in South Dakota and over in Michigan, 

 and in new Zealand where conditions are so much different than here, the 

 the conditions have been different. 



There is one thing I would like to speak about; the thought was suggested 

 to me by a buttermaker at dinner, and that is in regrard to the acid test. He 

 said he ripens his cream up to thirty-four degrees acidity. Now I say that 

 thirty-four degrees is not acidity at all, it is only c. c. solution. At Rockford 

 Professor Van Norman, of Indiana, gave a very able paper on acid test; 

 Professor Carson, who recently came from Canada to Wisconsin, at the 

 cheesemakers' convention gave an able paper on acid tests. Both of these 

 gentlemen, however, gave a general modification of existing tests, which I 

 think is wrong. We have too many tests now; they are confusing. To 

 illustrate my point— I was called to a factory where they were having trouble 

 with their butter. The buttermaker had read that a prize winner in Mich- 

 igan had ripened his cream to thirty-three degrees. This buttermaker, not 

 knowing anything about it, bought a Farrington acid test and ripened his 

 cream thirty-three c. c. acidity. The consequence was that cream was 

 hardly more than sour and you may know the kind of butter he made; the 

 butter had no character whatever. So I say, in talking about acidity, these 

 associations could do a great deal of good by coming down to some uniform 

 basis to express acidity, not express it in c. c. but express it in degrees of 

 acidity, which it seems to me would be the proper thing. 



I think that is all I care to say, Mr. President. I thank you. 



