237] THE MANUFACTURE OF BUTTER ^ 



butter before the days of cold storage was a problem, and 

 as butter is a very perishable product, it was desirable to 

 send it to market as it was made. The application of the 

 factory system to the manufacture of butter was therefore 

 delayed until transportation and cold-storage facilities were 

 developed. It will be seen, also, below that the amount of 

 capital required in the butter factory as compared with 

 the amount needed at home is another important check 

 against rapidly transferring butter-making from the farm 

 to the factory. 



The equipment for making butter on the farm before the 

 introduction of the hand separator has always been very 

 simple, and in the early days of the country has often been 

 very crude. The most primitive method used in churning 

 butter is the agitation of milk or cream in skins. 1 This 

 method is known to have been used in ancient times. As 

 late as 1887 in Argentine. S. A., in the vicinity of Buenos 

 Ayres, the same method was used. 2 Skins containing the 

 milk were tied on the back of a horse and taken by the 

 rider to the city. By the time he arrived at his customer's 

 door the butter was churned. In England in the twelfth 

 century a wooden dash churn was used. In America from 

 the colonial days to the present time a great diversity of 

 churns have been in use. Various types of dash churns, 

 barrel churns, and box churns were used. The butter 

 churn received a great deal of the inventor's attention. 

 Henry E. Alvord writes in the Agricultural Yearbook of 

 1889 that a search of the United States Patent Office 

 records reveals the fact that patents were issued providing 



1 For an exhaustive treatment of equipment in the dairy industry, see 

 Bailey's Encyclopedia of American Agriculture, vol. iii, pp. 198-207. 



2 From a letter by Baylis W. Hanna, of the United States Legation, 

 dated Buenos Ayres, Nov. 1 1, 1887, reprinted in the Fourth Annual 

 Report of the New York State Dairy Commissioner, p. 164. 



