RECEIVING MILK AND CREAM 119 



part of the creamerymen of the necessity of supplying the market 

 with bettter butter in order to dispose of it at a satisfactory mar- 

 gin, and the efforts of the dairy educational forces to introduce 

 practical methods for the systematic grading of cream, have been 

 mighty factors in focusing the attention of the creamerymen on 

 improving their cream supply by cream grading and quality- 

 paying. 



The earlier efforts at cream grading were largely abortive. 

 In isolated cases some concerns had the courage and determina- 

 tion to grade and pay on the basis of grade only. But the great 

 majority of creameries, while acknowledging the fundamental 

 correctness of cream grading, lacked the courage to undertake 

 it. Their intentions foundered on the rock of competition in 

 the cream supply territory. They lacked confidence in each other 

 to stand by mutual agreements to start grading and quality-pay- 

 ing. They were fearful of losing patrons and of working into 

 the hands of their competitors. Gentlemen's agreements, drafted 

 in sectional and national conferences of creamerymen to grade 

 cream- proved futile. Attempts to place legislative measures on 

 the statute books, requiring the grading of cream proved uncon- 

 stitutional, and Government inspection of the creameries for the 

 purpose of compelling nation-wide cream grading did not ma- 

 terialize because of the enormity of the proposed undertaking. 



While most of these proposed and apparently ideal plans 

 failed to materialize and were automatically abandoned, one after 

 another, the constant agitation of the subject did not fail to 

 have its good effect. While it became clear to all practical 

 creamerymen that the industry was not ripe as yet for an 

 organized state- or nation-wide plan of cream grading by mutual 

 agreement between creameries, farsighted creamerymen realized 

 that this complex and difficult matter was a problem to be solved 

 independently by each individual creamery and that it was to 

 the unquestioned advantage of each individual concern to in- 

 troduce cream grading in their own plants. 



Today most of the really progressive creameries, large and 

 small, are grading their cream and many of these creameries pay 

 the farmer on the basis of quality. Those who have taken this 



