168 OLEOMARGARINE. 



will permit me, is that this butter originally, when they conceived 

 the idea of gathering it up from the farmers or the stores, had never 

 been used. When they found they could use it, they began to gather 

 it up, and there came a demand for it, and they gathered it as fast as 

 it was brought, and that raised the price. 



Mr. LESTEADE. This gentleman may possibly be correct about that, 

 Mr. Chairman, thirty years ago, but I am not going as far back as 

 that thirty or forty years ago, when there were pioneers in the 

 West but it is not correct since twenty -five years ago; and a quarter 

 of a century is pretty far back to go. 



I will say also that I do sell the home trade in creameries. I am 

 interested in two or three creameries, and I was about to go on to the 

 creamery question." The same thing applies in regard to the cheapness 

 of creameries. The poor creameries that were coming East up to the 

 time that oleomargarine dawned upon the United States were some- 

 thing abominable. There was hardly such a thing as knowing what 

 your next shipment would be. You would get a fine piece of butter 

 in to-day, and from the same creamery next week you would get a 

 poor piece of butter. 



I state as a fact that oleomargarine did for butter all I have stated. 

 The time came when my export trade and the demand for creameries 

 was so great from this country, on account of our being able to start 

 a little bit of a process of our own, an imitation of the Danish process, 

 that I found I had to make some arrangement with some creamery in 

 this country to make my butter. I went to two or three of the best 

 creameries in New York State and they were unable or unwilling to 

 make the high grade of butter that I wished for. I went West and the 

 same thing happened. I was then obliged to go in and put myself in 

 a position to make this butter, and the consequence is that to-day and 

 there is no egotism on my part, because the proof of the pudding is in 

 the eating of it we are sending now butter in competition with the 

 well-known world-renowned Danish butter. We are sending it all over 

 South America, all over the West Indies, down in China, and down in 

 South Africa, but we could not do it until we put up and became inter- 

 ested in our own creameries. Even to-day the creameries of this coun- 

 try are not making the butter they should make. 



Now, another thing right here in regard to the creamery question, 

 and I am endeavoring to lead up to a point here, gentlemen of the 

 committee, which I trust I will be able to make clear to you. 

 Another thing that is detrimental is that the wonderful mechanism 

 and discoveries that we have made in regard to centrifugal force and 

 the different machinery used in making butter is really a detriment to 

 butter for this reason: That to-day the dairyman, the creamery man, 

 wants to turn his butter out in fifteen minutes, and from the cow he 

 wants to give you a piece of butter on your plate twelve or fifteen or 

 twenty minutes after you have seen the milk taken from the cow. 

 That is all they are aiming at. I heard one of my neighbors say that 

 he thought he would soon be able, with the discoveries that were 

 being made and the new processes that were being used, to milk his 

 cow and put butter into the market the next day. I do not believe it 

 needs a very brilliant mind to know that butter of that character will 

 not stand up. 



The CHAIRMAN. What is the Danish process you have been speak- 

 ing of \ 



