340 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
ducers, manufacturers, commission merchants, and, particularly, 
on tlie part of consumers. 
In the last decade extraordinary efforts have been made by state 
authorities, and by dairy schools, in the direction of instruction of 
buttermakers along scientific lines. The thought has been often 
expressed that with buttermakers better trained for their work, and 
with greater knowledge of conditions from a scientific standpoint, 
a great improvement in the quality of butter would be notice- 
able. The efforts of these various forces has been very marked and 
great advances have been made in the directions as planned. Only 
once in a while is a buttermaker discovered that is not making about 
as good butter out of the material at hand as could be expected. The 
ability of buttermakers in this state has very greatly improved 
without a corresponding improvement in the quality of the goods 
that they are able to produce, and it is quite evident that further 
improvement in their knowledge of buttermaking will not wholly 
solve the question of quality in the future any more than it has 
in the past. 
Another line of effort to which considerable energy has been de- 
voted has been the attempted education of creamery patrons by 
means of farmers' meetings, farmers' institutes, dairy associations, 
and the dairy press. Such efforts have been of very great value 
to the dairy industry in this state, but have brought results more 
along the line of cheaper methods of production and manufacture 
rather than in the direction of cleanliness and general improvement 
of the raw material and the resulting product. 
It has also been seriously suggested that prosecutions by some 
state or other official, would be the solution of the problem. There 
are 552 creameries, and probably 3,000 cream buying stations in 
this state and more than 100,000 persons selling to them. It is 
quite evident that the enforcement of any such statute would re- 
quire a small army of officials and such prosecutions could be di- 
rected only toward unwholesome and unclean products and not 
against those that w^ere merely second or third class, but still fit for 
making butter. Convictions could be secured only in cases where 
the facts were out of the ordinary, and such prosecutions would not 
result in eliminating a good deal of the milk and cream from which 
now second and third grade butter is unavoidably made. 
Efforts along the lines suggested above are extremely valuable 
and desirable and should not only be continued but if possible in- 
creased in volume, but the experiences of the past with these 
