508 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



In the evolution of all these changes in the dairy industry, not one 

 of which has not proved most satisfactory and profitable to the dairyman, 

 and yet each step has been greeted with opposition and looked upon 

 with grave suspicion. However, the law is an inexorable as the law of 

 death. 



The survival of the fittest has settled the difficulties and removed 

 suspicions and as it ever has been, so it ever will be. The best and 

 greatest good for the greatest number only will be permanent. 



In the rehearsal of the foregoing facts and the evolution through 

 which we have passed, the writer has endeavored to prepare your minds 

 for the next evolution, cheaper production, which involves centralization, 

 and again the unchangeable law, the survival of the fittest, will decide 

 whether it will be permanent or temporary. 



One central creamery plant manufacturing a carload of butter per 

 day will extinguish the fires under forty boilers at 10 o'clock a. m. which 

 otherswise would consume fuel several hours longer, if the butter is 

 manufactured at the forty different points. The economy of labor requir- 

 ing at least one man less in each of the forty creameries, is an item the mag- 

 nitude of which cannot be Ignored. A carload of butter all manufactured 

 under one roof where one expert superintends ripening the cream, se- 

 curing superior aromatic flavor, one shade of color, all uniformly salted, 

 will command one-half to one and a half cents per pound higher than a 

 carload of butter manufactured in forty different creameries of various 

 shades of color, salt and flavor. 



It is a difficult matter, indeed hardly possible to secure a carload 

 of butter from forty creameries without great variation in quality, which 

 secures the fancy brand and commands a premium. The extra price pos- 

 sible to secure on a carload of butter uniform in quality, of superior 

 merit, would go far toward paying the operating expenses. Purchasing 

 tubs, salt, and coal in carload consignments would secure the minimum 

 price at which these supplies could be procured, which would be equally 

 true of butter color, tub liners and other minor supplies. Another very 

 important matter, the value and results of which could hardly be over- 

 estimated: The employment of a food instructor in the field to instruct 

 the milk producer in scientific feeding and the importance of better care 

 and breeding. 



The writer not long ago was the observer at one station in Wiscon- 

 sin that received in one day 6,330 pounds of milk from 238 cows, an 

 average of 26 59-100 pounds per cow. On the same territory one company 

 receiving milk from 18,328 cows the average was only 17 58-100 pounds, 

 9 1-100 pounds less than the average of the cows of the dairyman that 

 had adopted better care and feeding a balanced ration. The loss from the 

 18,328 cows to the dairyman amounted to 165.135 pounds of milk, over 

 82^ tons worth at 70 cents per hundred, $1,155.94 in one day. 



Iowa is the greatest butter producing state in the Union, and the 

 one in which the greater proportion is made on the factory plan. Iowa has 

 780 creameries, only two counties being without them. In these cream- 

 eries about 88,000,000 pounds of butter are annually manufactured from 



