Cooperation 147 



ment and manufactured into butter. The skimming 

 stations may be located from five hundred to seven hun- 

 dred and fifty miles from the central butter factory; a 

 corporation in Topeka, Kansas, for example, assembling 

 the butter-fat from southern Colorado, Oklahoma, north- 

 ern Texas, and from Kansas. The centralizers sell the 

 butter to the jobbers and retailers direct under a compre- 

 hensive marketing system. In some cities, they deliver 

 the butter from the railroad to the retail dealers in their 

 own wagons. 



The centralizer creameries are highly developed busi- 

 ness institutions. Some of them manufacture 100,000 

 pounds of butter daily and turn out from fifteen to twenty 

 thousand tons annually. The managers are experienced 

 business men and are sometimes paid five thousand dol- 

 lars a year. They can employ well-trained butter-makers 

 and can apply the best butter-making science to the equip- 

 ment of their factories. The factory equipment and the 

 supplies are purchased on a large scale, and the volume of 

 business is large enough to develop a well-organized mar- 

 keting system. Compared with the average cooperative 

 creamery, the centralizer creameries are far in advance 

 in the science and art of butter-making and in the organi- 

 zation as a business enterprise. From the standpoint 

 of the product itself they are at a distinct disadvantage, 

 because the grade of cream that reaches the central fac- 

 tory from the skimming stations is below the quality of 

 that delivered to the farmers' creamery. It reaches the 

 central factory in all kinds of conditions, and the factory 

 has to depend on the technical skill of the butter-maker 

 to renovate and blend the different lots of butter-fat and 



