58 THE BUTTER INDUSTRY IN UNITED STATES [282 



through a cooperative association already established and 

 organized primarily to serve some other purpose, such as 

 the testing of cows or the manufacture of butter. At 

 Coopersville, Mich., cooperative buying is sometimes done 

 by the cooperative creamery association. There was a time 

 when the farmers could not get cottonseed meal, oil meal, 

 and gluten feed at desired prices and in suitable quantities 

 from the dealers of the town. Car-load lots of feed were 

 therefore secured through the creamery association. The 

 effect of this was to cause dealers to sell on terms which 

 were just as satisfactory to the farmers as they could get 

 by buying cooperatively. Cooperative buying in this in- 

 stance was therefore discontinued. 1 Important savings can 

 be made by buying in large lots, but if the cooperative 

 organization exists, to be used whenever satisfactory terms 

 are not secured through dealers and thus keep prices down, 

 it may be better in many instances to allow professional 

 business men to do the buying so as to enable the dairy 

 farmer to devote all of his energies to matters of produc- 

 tion. 



BUSINESS ORGANIZATION OF THE CREAMERY 



The first creameries in the United States were practi- 

 cally all organized on the cooperative plan. Since then 

 other forms of organization have increased faster than the 

 cooperative form. 



The organization of the butter factory at Hatfield, Massa- 

 chusetts, established in 1880, is typical of the forms of 

 organization of all butter and cheese factories during the 

 early days of the factory system. An account 2 of the plan 

 of organization of the Hatfield factory will therefore give 

 an idea of the earliest cooperation in the dairy industry of 



1 Vide, Report of the Michigan Dairy Association for 1909, p. 302. 



2 Report of the Maine Board of Agriculture for 1881, p. 13. 



