r e 4 THE BUTTER INDUSTRY IN UNITED STATES [378 



The butter belt of the United States is in the north cen- 

 tral geographical division, the state of Wisconsin leading 

 with a factory product of 103,884,684 pounds. Of the 

 eastern states New York and Pennsylvania still produce 

 large amounts. Five of the north central states, Wiscon- 

 sin, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois, produce more 

 than half of the total factory product of the country, and 

 therefore more than half of the butter that passes through 

 the big distributing centers comes from this section. The 

 most important cities that take part in distributing this 

 product are Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, San 

 Francisco, and St. Louis. Table no. 15 shows their rela- 

 tive importance. 



TABLE xv 

 Receipts of Butter at the Principal Markets in the United States 



(000 omitted) 



(From Agricultural Yearbook and Reports of Boards of Trade.) 



Chicago is a great interior distributing center. In 1914, it 

 received 311,557,000 lbs. of butter and shipped the same 

 year to various points in the country 295,784,000 lbs., 1 leav- 

 ing for local consumption 15,773,000 lbs. This is of course 



1 Report of the Chicago Board of Trade for 1914, PP- 102 and 103. 



