MARKETING OF BUTTER 413 



of butter and causing annually vast sacrifices in the form of un- 

 satisfactory returns to the farmers and creameries of this coun- 

 try. 



Essentials in Successful Marketing of Butter. Quality. 

 Quality is the first and all fundamental requisite for successful 

 marketing. Butter must be of such quality that there is a de- 

 mand for it. The consumer is the final judge of quality. The 

 importance of quality is summarized most admirably in an ad- 

 dress on Butter Markets by Mr. N. J. Eschenbrenner 1 of the 

 firm of Gude Bros. & Kieffer of New York City before the Dairy 

 students of Cornell University April, 1916, as follows: "In 

 summing up the whole proposition of marketing butter, it is 

 wholly a matter of quality. When good butter is competing 

 against poorer grades, when high flavored, clean butter is com- 

 peting against unclean flavors, when solid, waxy-bodied butter 

 is competing against weak-bodied, when desirable color, salt 

 and style is competing against undesirable color, salt and style 

 and general workmanship, on a basis of price and distribution, 

 the better grades get the preference over the poorer grades and 

 the poorer grades are absorbed only after satisfactory conces- 

 sion has been made in price." 



While it is true that at times of butter shortage, when the 

 demand exceeds the supply and the market is very brisk, the 

 difference in price between different grades of butter is relatively 

 small, because the average consumer is willing to "put-up" tem- 

 porarily with lower grades in preference to going without but- 

 ter, in the long run quality asserts itself. Under normal market 

 conditions and when the supply is equal to, or greater than the 

 demand, it is the lower grades that suffer. On quality depends 

 the stability and permanency of our butter markets, quality con- 

 trols the consumptive demand of the public, quality determines 

 our ability to successfully meet competition with butter substi- 

 tutes from within, and with imported butter from without our 

 country, quality is the key to the establishment of satisfactory 

 export markets abroad that will take care of our surplus at 

 home, quality decides our ability to pay the farmer, on whose 

 success the prosperity of the entire dairy industry depends, 

 prices sufficiently attractive to induce him to keep on feeding 



1 Eschenbrenner Address on Butter-Markets, New York Produce Review 

 & Am. Creamery, April, 1916. 



