NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII 
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and decreases just as other farm crops or products fluctuate from 
season to season. 
The state now has three condensed milk factories, located at 
Waverly, West Liberty and Perry and each is doing a succesful 
business. Other such plants are in prospect. 
ASSISTANT DAIRY COMMISSIONERS. 
The state has been fortunate in the character and ability of the 
men who have successively held office as assistant dairy commis- 
sioners, and the effectiveness of the work has been the greater by 
reason of the activity and interest sho^\TQ by them. But the kind 
of work done by them as well as the amount of it does not seem 
to be well understood. Frequent requests come to this department 
asking for the services of the assistant for a week or ten days at a 
time. It is impossible to attempt to meet such demands upon their 
time. It was never intended that the assistants should take the 
place of the dairy school and give a buttermaker a course of instruc- 
tion, nor that he should w^holly train a new creamery manager or 
secretary, nor that he should attempt to canvass the patronage of 
the creamery and try to remedy difficulties that are continuously 
met in every creamery and which ought to be handled by the 
creamery management without outside help. Such work might be 
very desirable, both from the standpoint of the creamery and of 
the dairy business generally, but with but two men at work among 
552 creameries it is an evident physical impossibility for the assist- 
ants to stay any extended length of time at any one plant. 
This department is required by statute to enforce certain laws 
of the state, which duty cannot well be avoided or postponed. Also 
the department is in receipt of numerous and constant requests for 
assistance in solving occasional and unusual problems, and with 
the limited force at command it is not possible to even get to all 
the plants in a year's time, much less do any extraordinary amount 
of work for each. It, therefore, happens that the department is 
embarassed by inability to comply with some of the requests made, 
and by the further fact that we are obliged to discriminate against 
some plants in the furnishing of assistance for the simple reason 
that we have two men to do the work that could scarcely be accom- 
plished by four. This is a situation for which the commissioner and 
assistants are not at all responsible. 
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