CONTEOL SOCIETIES 115 



ruinous business if ever there was one ! Two cows stood side 

 by side in a byre. Their yield of milk for a year had been 

 7810 lbs. and 8226 lbs. The latter cow would be considered 

 the better, if quantity of milk alone was to guide the farmer. 

 But the first cow gave milk with 4*26 per cent, of fat, the other 

 cow milk with only 2*93 per cent., or the first cow had during 

 the year produced 110 lbs. of butter more than the other. 

 These were hard facts which farmers could understand. 



During the following years Control Societies were formed 

 at various places. Kealising the economical importance of 

 this co-operative movement the State tried to foster it. Under 

 the Law on the Breeding of Domestic Animals, £550 available 

 for " other measures " to improve the breeding were devoted 

 to these societies. This was soon found to be a considerable 

 encouragement. As the Control Societies grew^ in number the 

 need for mutual aid was more and more felt. Meetings were 

 held by delegates from the various Control Societies to draw 

 up uniform rules for keeping books and carrying on the work 

 in general ; a collaboration between Control Societies and 

 Cattle Breeding Societies was initiated in order to utihse the 

 information collected by the former when selecting breeding 

 animals for the latter ; information as to the yield of milk 

 and butter was entered in the herd books ; and Federations 

 of Control Societies were formed which called annual meetings 

 for the discussion of the work. The State grant, which had 

 gradually been increased to £2200, appeared as a special item 

 in the Law of 1902. This Law fixed the grant to each society 

 as not above £14, the total not to exceed £6700, and made it 

 a condition for the grant, that " the society should have for 

 its aim to make dairy farming more profitable by examining 

 into the feeding of the individual cows and their yield of milk 

 by quantity and quahty and to help to produce strains of dairy 

 cattle with a higher yield of butter." 



Several hundred Control Societies were soon formed, but 

 a falling off in the increase was noticed at the beginning of 

 this century. Possibly the agitation has been carried too far ; 

 several farmers had been induced to join in the hope that the 

 good results of the work should be theirs without much personal 

 trouble. When they discovered that only by their participation 



