SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 105 



prior to the Civil War. But this system did not become general 

 until later. During the sixties and seventies cheese making 

 under the factory system developed somewhat rapidly, but after 

 1880 butter making began to absorb more of the energies of the 

 American dairymen and to displace cheese making. Under the 

 old system, where butter was made on farms, the butter-making 

 industry had centered in the eastern and central states, especially 

 in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. But under the new 

 system the center shifted westward and a great butter-producing 

 region developed in the territory which includes northern Illinois, 

 southern Wisconsin, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota. 

 Elgin, Illinois, became the central market of this region. Two 

 factors of primary importance in the development of the butter- 

 making industry were the Babcock test for the determination of 

 the proportion of butter fat in milk, and the centrifugal separator, 

 by means of which the cream could be extracted without haying 

 to set the milk and wait for the cream to rise through the influ- 

 ence of gravitation. Without these two inventions it is doubtful 

 if the factory system could ever have supplanted the domestic 

 system of producing butter. Another factor of great importance, 

 though it is commonly overlooked, is found -in the butter-consum- 

 ing habits of the American people. The Americans, like the 

 French, are bread eaters, and, unlike the French, uniformly con- 

 sume butter with the bread. This in itself calls for a large 

 butt er-producing industry and encourages the dairyman to special- 

 ize on butter. When this specialization has taken place it is but 

 natural that American dairymen should supply the markets of 

 other countries of the world. On the other hand, Americans 

 are not large consumers of cheese nor have they developed a 

 high specialization of taste as cheese consumers. There is, 

 therefore, very little encouragement to the American dairyman 

 to specialize in the making of that commodity, and he has found 

 it impossible to compete in the European markets with the more 



