Preface 



IT HAS taken a long time for some branches of 

 human activity to come under the regenerating 

 influence of science. But once she takes hold of 

 a proposition, science works rapidly and the cruder 

 and more primitive the subject she studies, the more 

 rapidly she works and the more wonderful are the 

 improvements she makes. 



It is remarkable indeed, and regrettable, that so vital 

 a human activity as farming, an industry upon which 

 the very existence of the human race depends, should 

 have been so long in coming out of the darkness of 

 primitive ideas and ideals and coming into the light of 

 modern science. It was only within the last half cen- 

 tury that a real beginning was made in the science of 

 agriculture and the real progress in better farming 

 methods has been made in the last quarter century. 



Buttermaking, logically a farm activity, began to 

 benefit by the application of scientific principles only 

 within the last twenty years or so. You need only 

 compare the efficiency and rapidity of the buttermak- 

 ing equipment in the modern creamery to the slow 

 and laborious old fashioned farm churn to realize what 

 science has done in the art of buttermaking. A com- 

 parison of the quality of butter produced by the two 

 methods also makes a strong case for the modern way 

 of making butter. 



But the farmer has not profited as he should by the 

 wonderful improvements in the method of buttermak- 

 ing. The rapid development of scientific principles in 

 this industry has been limited to a type of machine 

 too large and too expensive for the individual farm 

 use. The farmer was left with an inefficient barrel 

 churn that gave him but little chance to apply scien- 

 tific principles and processes to buttermaking even if 

 he was familiar with them. 



