172 OLEOMARGARINE. 



Mr. LESTRADE. Cold storage. Creamery started in on a basis of 17 

 and 18 cents. I am speaking of 1898, a year ago last spring. That is 

 when the new creamery butter begins. They begin to come in the last 

 of May, and during June and July. The market started at 16i to 17 

 cents. Even that leaves a profit to us creamery men. The market 

 gradually rose from 16^ and crept up. It kept quiet during the month 

 of July, and then the export men started in again. Then we gradually 

 raised the price of our held creameries 1 mean our June goods that 

 were put in cold storage and some of us sold out as high as 28 and 

 30 cents. That is where the illegitimate profits come in. 



Mr. HOARD. You are not a patron to creameries ? 



Mr: LESTRADE. I am a part owner of three creameries. 



Mr. HOARD. You are not a man who supplies milk to the creameries? 



Mr. LESTRADE. No. 



Mr. HOARD. You are not speaking of the cost of butter to the farmer, 

 are you? 



Mr. LESTRADE. No; the cost of butter to the creamery man, to the 

 patrons, to the farmers who own the creameries. 



Mr. HOARD. Not to the patrons ? The patrons are the farmers who 

 supply the milk? 



Mr. LESTRADE. Yes; and they are also interested in creameries, as 

 I am. 



Mr. HOARD. No; only very few of them. 



Mr. LESTRADE. They ought to be, then. They are not looking after 

 their own interests if they are not. Every farmer ought to be inter- 

 ested in a creamery. 



Mr. HOARD. We have 80 patrons in 10 creameries and not a man of 

 them owns a dollar in them. 



Mr. LESTRADE. Then it is a monopoly. 



Mr. HOARD. You may call it what you please. They control the 

 proposition. 



Mr. LESTRADE. They should own them. That is what I am advo- 

 cating, gentlemen, now, as a butter man. I say to the farmers: "Put 

 up your own creameries. There is money in it." I am now advoca- 

 ting buying farm land in Massachusetts that has been lying idle, and 

 farm land in New Hampshire. I went up to see some most elegant 

 land, where the springs are constantly cold in midsummer, and I said 

 to those gentlemen: "Why, men, fellow-dairymen, fellow-farmers, 

 there is money in butter. Why don't you put your money in it? 

 Instead of growling that you can not get anything out of milk, put 

 your money into creameries instead of selling your milk." The gen- 

 tleman who preceded me, the food commissioner of one of the Western 

 States, made this remark, at which I could not help smiling, that in 

 the winter, when butter is hard to get and high in price, then the oleo 

 man gets in his licks. He did not use that term, but that is what he 

 meant. You have no business to have butter so high in winter and 

 hard to get if } T OU manage your milk right, if you feed your cows right, 

 if you look after them and take an interest in them. In other words, 

 I do not blame the farmers so much. They are being educated every 

 day. We are all trying to educate them we who have other indus- 

 tries, we who are distributing this butter right and left throughout 

 the United States and throughout the world. We are endeavoring to 

 educate the farmer to that extent, but he works slowly. It is hard for 

 him to make a change. It is hard even to induce him to use new imple- 



