THE MILK AND CREAM TRADE. 145 



keep back a meal's or a day's milk, and this is always an awk- 

 ward thing for the farmer. But where a factory is worked along 

 with a milk trade, the plan appears to answer very well indeed. 

 Any of the cheese factories which are within reasonable dis- 

 tance of a railway may probably be inclined to supply milk to 

 dealers in times of scarcity. 



It is obviously undesirable to send to a town, on any given 

 day, more milk than the town requires ; the balance may best 

 be dealt with in a creamery or cheese factory, be it much or 

 little. There are drawbacks even to this, of course, but they are 

 reduced to manageable limits, and potential losses are avoided. 

 A creamery can do almost anything in reason down to mak- 

 ing margarine and margarine cheese ; separated milk, with 

 margarine added, has sometimes produced cheese that was sur- 

 prisingly good ; the difficulty is that it cannot prosper much 

 while ordinary cheese is down below 503. per cwt, there is 

 no room for it then, it is not wanted. I cannot advise the 

 managers of any creamery to begin making margarine cheese. 

 The reputation of American cheese in this country has been 

 seriously injured by the margarine counterfeit which has been 

 sent over. The loss to American dairying from this cause is 

 just incalculable infinitely greater than any possible profit 

 which the counterfeit may have yielded. 



But, on the other hand, at a creamery the best possibilities 

 of dairying may be reached, a trade in cream may be built up, 

 the finest butter can be produced, an urban milk trade can be 

 met at every turn of demand, a timid demand for separated 

 milk may be encouraged till it becomes a vigorous and valuable 

 trade ; or the separated milk may be devoted to any other legi- 

 timate purpose to the making of buttons, door-knobs, and so 

 on. I have capital samples of them before me as I write - 

 hard, bright, close-grained as ivory but how they are made I 

 cannot say. 



The cream separator is the good genius of a creamery, or of 

 any other establishment where butter is a speciality ; it is just 

 as indispensable as a mowing machine is in harvest time. If 

 you get the cream out of the milk whilst both are perfectly 



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