262 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Chairman: We will next listen to an address by Hon. H. R. 
Wright, State Dairy and Food Commissioner of Iowa. 
ADDRESS. 
H. B. WEIGHT, DAIEY AND FOOD COMMISSIONER, DES MOINES, IOWA. 
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Iowa State Dairy Association: 
I don't know whether or not you will be interested or entertained by 
what I have to say. It may be that some of you will disagree with the 
ideas I have. 
For several years there has been an irrepressible conflict in this state 
between two methods of creamery management. We have each year met 
in convention and ponderously wondered just what the outcome would 
be. A few of us have discussed the manners and methods of the faction 
to which we did not belong with considerable heat and unnecessary and 
unavailing anger. The large number of us have been mildly interested 
in the present, a trifle curious about the future and not too well posted 
about existing conditions or prevailing tendencies. We have complained 
about various details, the hand separator and some of its attendant evils, 
but most of us have thought that the problems confronting us have for us 
individually an academic curiosity. The object of what I have to say is 
first, if possible, to set forth without arousing unnecessary ill feeling the 
facts of the present conditions in dairying in Iowa, and to call attention 
to the prevailing tendencies upon which we are obliged to estimate the 
future. Second, to suggest for the present and the future evils one kind 
of remedy that has not yet been tried and not largely discussed. Third, 
to suggest an addition to the methods of co-operative creamery manage- 
ment that I believe will strengthen them and make for permanence in 
such organizations. 
We shall do well to come to a discussion of the matter with open 
minds, with our prejudices left at home, and with a desire to know and 
to weight those facts that cannot be disputed. Opinions are sometimes 
valuable but facts are mighty stubborn things and do not give way to 
mere opinions. 
In 1900 this state had 994 creameries and stations; now it has 552. 
Since 1900 about five hundred creameries and stations have been closed 
and about fifty opened. Creameries have been closed in every part of the 
state in about the same number for each county or other area. No part 
of the state has escaped this change, not even those portions where the 
co-operative has been and is in the ascendency. One-third of the butter 
of this state is now made in less than thirty-five creameries, making 
from 300,000 pounds of butter annually to 6,000,000 pounds annually. No 
railway station in Iowa is more than seventy-five miles from at elast two 
of the thirty-five central plants. In another seven years there will 
be a still furtner decrease in the number of our creameries, and nine-tenths 
of the butter will be made in three score creameries and the total number 
will be less than one hundred. That's an opinion, but I believe it is an 
absolutely correct one unless present conditions and tendencies are by 
some means vitally changed. 
