COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 297 



On account of the large and uniform product, buyers come 

 or send to the creamery; consequently the creamery manager 

 can sell or hold the product in the refrigerator until he gets 

 the ofifer he regards as fair. These same principles hold 

 true in the marketing of any farm product. 



Why Some Creameries Fail. — That a well managed and 

 well patronized co-operative creamery can compete success- 

 fully with any other known plant, in the manufacture of 

 butter, has been amply proved. Still there are now many 

 creameries that are being injured, and a few of them closed, 

 by the competition of the large privately owned creameries 

 called "centralizers." These ''centralizers" have their cream 

 shipped from any place they can get it. To get cream 

 where there is a local creamery, they may offer a better 

 price than the local creamery can pay, or they may get cream 

 at the same price from a few of its dissatisfied patrons. 



Losing any considerable amount of cream greatly weak- 

 ens the local plant, and it cannot pay as much for butter- 

 fat as it had been paying, because the butter maker's salary 

 and other expenses must be paid out of a smaller output. 

 Thus the local plant is forced to run at a loss or to close. 



Support Local Creamery. — The closing of the local 

 creamery would not be so undesirable, if the centrahzers 

 continued to pay good prices for cream; but they cannot as 

 a rule continue to pay as good prices as a well managed 

 and well patronized co-operative plant, because they have 

 difficulty in getting cream of as good quality as the co-op- 

 erative creamery can obtain; and consequently cannot make 

 as uniformly good butter. 



It generally happens that when the local creamery is 

 closed, the centralizer, being relieved of competition, re- 

 duces the price paid for cream below that paid by the best 

 co-operative plants. 



For their own interests as well as the interests of the 

 community, it pays patrons of a co-operative creamery to 

 stand by their own plant and not be lured away by tempor- 

 ary high prices, or high tests, or by jealousy and spite; for 

 the chances are that, as soon as the local creamery is closed, 

 they will get less for butter-fat than their own creamery 

 can pay them, if they patronize it. 



