296 RURAL MICHIGAN 



■while only Houghton County in the Upper Peninsula 

 made any showing. 



The manufacture of butter in factories was intro- 

 duced into Michigan apparently even later than that 

 of cheese-making, and was also originated in New 

 York.^ The Board of Agriculture in several reports 

 issued in the post-bellum era takes considerable 

 pains to explain a new method of butter-making as 

 an incident of cheese production whereby the double 

 advantage of obtaining both products from the same 

 milk was duly set forth. By 1888 the State's one 

 hundred cheese factories were matched, it was an- 

 nounced, by as many creameries." The making of 

 butter on farms has gone forward coincidentally 

 with its production in factories, and in 1899, the 

 farm output w^as 60,051,998 pounds, while the fac- 

 tory product was only 7,820,712 pounds, as reported 

 in the Twelfth United States Census. In another 

 decade, the farm production had fallen off somewhat 

 and stood at 50,405,426 pounds, and the factory out- 

 put had advanced to 35,511,760 pounds, indicating 

 a seven-fold increase in the production of creameries 

 during the ten-year period. The Thirteenth United 

 "States Census (1910) indicated that the production 

 of butter was then, and remains, widely distributed 

 throughout the two peninsulas, varying primarily 

 with the density of the rural population, with the 

 counties as Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Eaton, Gene- 



'"Rept. Mich. Bd. Agr.," 1868, 228. 

 Ubid., 1888, 388. 



