EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII. 345 



guiding principles which direct our efforts. We are aware also that 

 questionably honest practices are the rule of some. 



In the keenness of competition which now exists quality seems to be 

 forgotten. The cry comes, how can we make a good grade of butter from 

 the cream we are now receiving. Makers and managers are willing to 

 go to almost any limit if they can cover up or hide from the consumers 

 of butter the decomposed condition in which much of the cream is now 

 received. How many makers are engaged in creameries, guaranteeing 

 "extras" out of cream, some of which is scarce fit for the "swill barrel," 

 let alone human consumption. Cream two, three, yes, ten days old, is be- 

 ing made into butter notwithstanding everything scieifce has to teach us 

 in regard to possibility of ptomaine poisons as produced in old cream and 

 milk, notwithstanding other fermentations which so far as we know or 

 care are a menace to public health. Pasteurization is being used not as 

 a scientific process in the manufacture of butter of good quality, but 

 rather as a "cure all" for the indifferent quality of cream now received. 



Surely it is not too much to say that such standards as motives of 

 action are not conducive to the best interests of dairying. Instead of 

 working for quality in the raw material we seem to be content to doctor 

 up, what cannot be doctored without in some way working to the detri- 

 ment of the industry. Whatever comes we must not give up until we in 

 Iowa have raised the standard of quality from its present rather unde- 

 sirable position. To do this we must have better raw material. To get 

 this better raw material should be then our purpose rather than in im- 

 proving what after all cannot be permanently improved, this low grade 

 cream that is now being received. We cannot make gold out of silver 

 ore, much less can we honestly place before the consuming public a high 

 grade butter made out of raw material which is of very questionable qual- 

 ity, made so by fermentations which show very clearly that the cream was 

 produced under careless, if not unclean and even filthy conditions. 



There are managers and directors who feel sore if we do not make a 

 high grade quality of butter out of a low grade quality of raw material. 

 Gentlemen, it can't be done, and the sooner we realize this the better. 

 Taste some of the cream and one would require to have a strong stomach 

 if he would retain any portion of such stuff. Yet we are forced to receive 

 it as it is, make it into butter as best we can and in some instances place 

 it in a beautifully illustrated carton, on one side of which a herd of cows 

 is seen to graze peacefully in clover, kne'e deep, by a clear limpid brook 

 babbling peacefully. On the other side we read that this special brand is 

 made of pasteurized cream, guaranteed to be pure, sweet and clean, while 

 inside is found a grade of butter which, to tell the truth, we are heartily 

 ashamed of. Such practices are a menace to the industry and unworthy 

 of a dairyman. 



Nor is this all. Most of us know of men, if they are worthy of the 

 name of men, who, when a patron of another creamery comes to him with 

 cream, "boosts the reading," so to speak, as he chuckles to himself, "I 

 guess I fixed the other maker that time." Others there are who are small 

 enough, 2x4, and mean enough to "cut" the tests that he may show an 

 overrun that he has not brains enough to obtain by any other means, 

 justifying himself that it is a co-operative creamery anyway and it all 



