388 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



WEDNESDAY MORNING, 10:30. 



Vice-president Stephenson presiding. 



Mr. Stephenson: Our first number this morning is an address 

 by Ira O'Neel, of Clarion, on the subject of "Problems of Creamery 

 Management" : 



PROBLEMS OF CREAMERY MANAGEMENT. 



IRA O'NEEL, CLARION, IOWA. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Iowa State Dairy Association. 



I assure you that I highly appreciate the privilege which is mine today 

 to speak to you upon a subject of so great importance as the problems of 

 creamery management. I wish to say just here that I was not chosen to 

 speak upon this subject because I had solved all the problems of cream- 

 ery management for I doubt not that long after you and I have passed 

 from this stage of action that there will still be some problems unsolved. 



I presume that if I were to line up one hundred men from this audi- 

 ence, managers, secretaries and buttermakers from one hundred sections 

 in the state of Iowa and interrogate them as to» the one problem which they 

 considered of the greatest importance in the management of creameries to- 

 day, I doubt not that 99 out of the 100 would give me virtually the same 

 answer and that answer would be "to get cream of such quality that it 

 can be made into fine butter." This is indeed a problem of vital impor- 

 tance, a question which at present means not only the success or failure 

 but the life or death of some creameries. 



I believe a large per cent of us, in fact all of us, who have been con- 

 nected with the creamery industry for the past ten years or more can well 

 remember when conditions were not what they are today; it is true that 

 the whole milk system had its difficulties and its problems to be solved but 

 under the "gathered cream" system the difficulties have grown and multi- 

 plied as "mountains beside mole hills." But do not understand me to say 

 that I consider that the "gathered cream" system is responsible for all our 

 problems today for I do not believe that it was ever intended by the 

 promoters of the "gathered cream" system that it should be run as it is 

 run over a large part of our country today. In the first place it never was 

 intended that some farmers and dairymen should skim and handle their 

 cream in conditions and surroundings which are unsanitary to say the 

 least. Neither was it intended that in many sections of the country, 

 wagon drivers should start out at sunrise and drive all day or a large 

 part of the day and gather cream when the mercury plays around the 

 ninety degree mark or higher. Much less was it ever intended that a 

 very large percentage of this same cream should pass through the hands 

 of the indiscriminating merchant buyer who cares little or nothing of the 

 quality of the cream or the conditions under which it was produced so 

 long as he gets his commission for handling, and this is not all, he not 



