12 AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION 



centuries it was the practice of peasants in the Alpine 

 valleys of Italy to bring together their supplies of milk and 

 treat them in common, for the production of cheese, in the 

 house of each associate in succession. Here one does, 

 indeed, get the principle of combination ; but, in actual 

 practice, the setting up of a factory, for dealing with the 

 milk or cream produced within a certain radius, was a 

 much more advanced form of combination. 



It was in the United States that the modern type of 

 dairy factory originated. The first was organised in the 

 State of New York in i860, and by 1866 there were nearly 

 500 in operation. At the outset the factories made cheese 

 only, but creameries, or butter factories, followed soon 

 after, though these did not come into general vogue until 

 1880. 



Two years later the Danish peasant proprietors set up 

 their first butter factory on strictly co-operative lines ; 

 and since that time the expansion of this principle, both 

 in Denmark and in other countries, has been great indeed, 

 thanks to the progress alike of science and of the spirit of 

 association. 



Science assisted, if it did not really establish, the move- 

 ment through the invention, by Lehfeld, in 1876, of the 

 centrifugal cream separator, which allowed of a greater 

 yield of cream and, consequently also, of butter, from the 

 milk. Every farmer could not afford to have a separator 

 of his own, and it was obviously better that, instead of 

 each remaining independent of his neighbour, groups of 

 them should co-operate to obtain the necessary appliances 

 and appoint a skilled staff to make their butter for them 

 in factories established for the purpose and under such 

 conditions that the cost of production would be reduced 

 to a minimum, while the supply of large quantities of butter 

 of uniform quality would be assured. 



In 1887 the Danes further set up their first co-operative 

 bacon factory. 



Combination for production to-day forms one of the 

 most important phases of the agricultural organisation 



