324 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 
Some of you older buttermakers and creamerymen can remember the 
low prices received for dairy products when the twin evils of oleo and 
filled cheese were allowed to masquerade in the guise of the genuine; 
when the filled cheese^law was passed, due to the efforts of organized 
dairymen, the price of the pure article was raised 25 to 33 per cent and 
since the passage of the law of 1902 which relieved us of much of the 
unfair competition of the oleo makers, the price of pure butter has in- 
creased, thus stimulating production. The average price in 1896 (the 
lowest in 27 years) was 17.8 cents and under the stimulus of efllcient 
laws, enforced as well as the means at hand would permit, the average 
price has raised until in 1907 it was 27 2-3 cents. 
In the dairy press and at every convention for some years past since 
the hand separator has come into general use, complaints long and loud 
have been made that the methods of the centralizers in obtaining business 
have been detrimental to the local creameries, that they have resorted to 
methods of a type commonly known as "Standard Oil Methods" and con- 
sisting in the main of paying larger prices for butterfat than it was 
worth where there was competition, of raising the test, of accepting 
cream in any condition regardless of its fitness for making an article of 
human food; of a desire to monopolize the industry and so on. 
I quote from the report of the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry 
on this point as follows: 
"The methods of the centralizers are sometimes very reprehensible. 
Where these concerns have come into competition with small creameries, 
they have raised their prices to a point that made it impossible for the 
small concerns to continue, and have thus forced the latter out of busi- 
ness. Competition having been destroyed and a monopolj^ secured, the 
prices paid to the farmers were lowered. The large concerns operating 
over a great territory, with here and there a competitor that they wished 
to put out of business, could in one locality raise the price paid above 
that possible to pay with profit, and at other places decrease the price so 
little as not to be apparent and more than offset the loss. This ability to 
destroy competition without self-injury has been used effectively in many 
localities." 
Investigating the business of the centralizers, it was found by certain 
friends of the local creameries that the centralizers had a much more 
favorable rate from the railroads for transporting cream than the local 
creameries had for transporting butter. So far as I know this first found 
public expression at the Wisconsin Buttermakers convention held at 
Wausau, February 5-8, 1907, when Hon. J. Q. Emery, addressing the con- 
vention, spoke in part as follows: 
"In my judgment never in the history of this state has the local 
creamery industry been so menaced as at the present time. If our local 
creamery interests in Wisconsin, this magnificent dairy state with a total 
annual income from her dairy products of more than fifty-seven million 
dollars, is to continue and advance that industry, there are certain con- 
ditions that are absolutely indispensable. First, and foremost, cleanliness 
in dairy products from cow to consumer; second, in our creamery work 
the testing of butter-fat in cream or milk of the patrons must be done with 
