NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 319 
creamery in this system is and will be dependent almost wholly upon 
that maker. Incidentally other factors enter in but not one factor bears 
such a part as this one. 
Some years ago the success of many of the co-operative creameries 
depended upon the absence of competition. In many places this is true 
still. In a large measure, however, this condition of affairs no longer 
exists and we have to look to better systems of management if the system 
as a system is to hold the premier position. Now in looking for better sys- 
tems of management to whom do we look? Usually the directors of a co- 
operative plant are farmers who as a class are noted for lack of business 
training. The secretary though better informed along business lines is 
not often better fitted than his associates, the president and directors. 
And there is a good reason for this. These men do not realize that the 
volume of business in one day in a creamery is often as much as passes 
through their hands in six months. They do not realize that in handling 
butter-fat they are handling a product three or four times the value of 
most other farm products. Besides their interests are not centered in 
the success of the creamery. They are interested and intensely inter- 
ested in the success of their farm. The farm is primary, the creamery 
is secondary in importance. Can you expect a creamery of such a sort 
to compete with one where the management is centered in the hands of 
a man whose very existence as manager of that plant is dependent upon 
its success? 
Besides, we know that this class of manager is inclined to practice 
small economies. You know and I also know through experience the 
difficulty of getting the absolute necessities of the creamery. Up-to-date 
machinery does not appeal to him. Pasteurizers and starter cans are 
but the phantasies of a disordered brain to one whose wife Maria made 
the best butter in the county without such fool apparatus. A piece of 
new belting, repairs to machinery, necessary improvements here and 
there all come within the compass of their economical tendencies. This 
w^ould not be so bad if this tendency did not extend to the maker. Even 
at this day and age we have advertised in dairy papers a want ad de- 
siring makers at from $40.00 to $50.00 per month. What kind of makers 
do they expect to get for that price? Is it for nothing that the managers 
of the central plants are paying for makers twice or threi times what is 
being paid in the small creameries? 
It has been stated on platforms and you have heard it argued else- 
where that a small creamery could not afford to pay for a high priced 
maker. I am firmly convinced that if the creamery has the right to exist 
as a creamery they cannot afford to be without a high priced maker, pro- 
vided that price actually pays for ability and not for bluff as is some- 
times the case. In a creamery whose average daily make is 300 pounds, 
one cent on quality alone would be sufficient to pay the difference be- 
tween a $40.00 per month man and one at $100.00 per month and then 
leave the $30.00 to help pay the running expenses of the creamery. An 
increase of five per cent on the overrun which is quite w^ithin the realm 
of possibility in many instances would on the same volume of business 
justify the management in paying the maker from $80.00 to $90.00 per 
