THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 507 



tive feature in looking into the faces of an Iowa audience differ- 

 ent from the Minnesota convention. Up there they all bring 

 their -wives and we have a very profitable and pleasant time. 



CREAMERY CENTRALIZATION. 



C. H. Hubbard, Independence, Iowa. 



In the discussion of the subject of centralization, or, one might say, 

 conforming with the demands of the age, or the times in which we live, 

 It is worth our while to take a retrospective view, recall the past, and 

 consider for a few moments the evolution of the dairy industry. 



Little more than a quarter of a century ago the environment sur- 

 rounding the industry that today has grown to marvelous proportions 

 and the conditions under which butter was made, were decidedly unfavor- 

 able. Cream was raised in shallow tin pans and churned by the weary 

 overworked farmer's wife and sold at the country store at prices hardly 

 possible to pay the cost of production, not considering the labor involved 

 in manufacturing the product. 



Later it was discovered that milk might be creamed by the gravity 

 process in long, narrow cans submerged in cold water. This was a step 

 forward and four cans did away with the labor of washing sixteen tin 

 pans and the labor of churning in 100 or more farm was reduced to 

 the labor of two men at the creamery, removing the burden of one hun- 

 dred churning on the farm, and this was not all. Instead of one hundred 

 different lots of butter flavored with the odors of cabbage, onions, 

 turnips, pancakes, catnip tea for the baby, and various other things too 

 numerous to mention. The butter was greatly improved and sold at 

 prices ranging from six to ten cents per pound higher, because of a more 

 uniform product, and although not the best that could be procured, it was 

 so much better than a hundred different lots made under more unfavor- 

 able conditions that the results were quite gratifying, and the number of 

 cows increased and the industry began to grow. 



Not enough, however, had yet been accomplished. In the onward 

 march of progress, in the great inventive genius of the world, the art of 

 creaming milk with centrifugal separators was discovered, and again 

 in the evolution of the dairy industry the slow process requiring thirty- 

 six hours to cream milk in five gallon cans, poorly and incompletely, must 

 give way to the centrifugal separator, in the creamery, extracting the 

 cream from 3,000 pounds of milk per hour, and again by reason of the 

 butter maker receiving his cream sweet, enabling him to introduce 

 favorable germs of bacteria, the growth and vegetation of which produces 

 distinct and desirable flavors, the market price was again advanced. 

 The introduction of the hand separator upon the farm is still another 

 step in the onward march of progress which enables the dairyman to 

 separate his milk at home (from the cream) and feed the milk to the 

 calves and pigs, and instead of hauling 1,000 pounds of milk every day 

 to the creamery the farmers takes 150 pounds of cream. 



