20 THE BUTTER INDUSTRY IN UNITED STATES [244 



and he had the genius to see opportunities and to organize 

 his business on entirely new lines. The son's marriage, the 

 father's contract to sell the cheese of the milk of the two 

 herds, coupled with lack of training on the part of the son 

 to make good cheese, were matters of chance. Skill, genius, 

 and chance were here united in such a way as to result in a 

 far-reaching innovation in the dairy industry. 1 The story 

 is a splendid illustration of how progress is made. 



It did not take long for the idea of the cheese-factory 

 system to be applied to butter-making. The first creamery 

 in the United Staes was built by Alanson Slaughter, near 

 Wallkill, Orange county, N. Y., in 1861. 2 



In the evolution of the creamery three stages are notice- 

 able. In the first factory the making of butter and cheese 

 were combined. The cream was raised by gravity, and 

 cheese was made from skimmed milk or from partly- 

 skimmed milk. In the second stage the cream was still 

 raised by gravity, but the creamery or butter factory be- 

 came a separate and distinct enterprise. Buildings were 

 erected to manufacture butter exclusively. In the third 

 stage the centrifugal separator occasioned a revolution in 

 the butter industry. The principle of raising cream by 

 gravity was superseded by the principle of separation of 

 fat from the skim milk by centrifugal force. 



In the early creamery the shallow-setting plan was used. 

 The milk was poured into large shallow vats. It was be- 

 lieved that a larger percentage of the fat would rise by this 



1 While the American factory method in dairying has been copied in 

 Europe and elsewhere, the idea of cooperative dairying cannot be said 

 to have first been tried out in this country. H. E. Alvord says that 

 the Swiss and French in the Jura Mountain region have been making 

 cheese on the cooperative plan in a small way for four centuries. 

 Vide, Census 1900, vol. ix, p. 438. 



2 Vide, H. E. Alvord in The Agricultural Yearbook for 1899, P- 386 ; 

 and X. A. Willard, Practical Dairy Husbandry, pp. 237-40. 



