424 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



contractors and peddlers, finds himself, let us briefly review 

 the evolution of the milk business. Fifty years ago the New 

 England farmer did everything at home, and got all there 

 was in the business up to the point of selling his product, 

 then mainly cheese or butter, to the local storekeeper or 

 country merchant, and those farmers near cities and towns 

 sellino- milk either direct to the consumer or sometimes to 

 the peddler. In the sixties, cheese factories sprang up, 

 taking the burden of cheese making from the farmhouse, 

 thus relievijig the farmer, and especially the farmer's wife, 

 of much hard work. Up to this time the farmer was not 

 only the manufacturer of his own cheese and butter, but 

 also raised all his grain, and made a large amount of 

 pork by keeping hogs fed upon the by-products, whey and 

 skim milk. This establishment of cheese factories was the 

 first step towards concentration in dairying in the districts 

 now covered by the milk contractors. The seventies saw the 

 introduction of creameries, the cheese business being driven 

 to the west. At this time the Boston milk contractors began 

 to reach out sixty or more miles for their supply. The 

 creameries, therefore, within that radius, except in a few 

 isolated instances, were short-lived, and one by one they are 

 dro}iping out all over the State, New York City drawing 

 milk from southwestern Berkshire, and Boston from the rest 

 of the State, aside from the local consumption by our grow- 

 ing cities and towns. 



The business of the Massachusetts dairyman has under- 

 gone a Avonderful change, — a change as complete in its way 

 as the business of shoe-making, in its transtbrmation from 

 the isolated cobbler in his little house at the cross roads to 

 the great factories in Lynn, Brockton and elsewhere. Dairy- 

 ing has followed the trend of every industry, viz., towards 

 concentration and specialization. On the farms where once 

 flourished cheese making, ))utt('r making, swine fattening, 

 beef fattening and the slaughterhouse, where also wheat for 

 the family and grain for the animals were raised, and the 

 flour bolted and the grain ground at the near-by grist mill, 

 and where great manure piles were the result of feeding by- 

 products, — all have given place to the modern milk pro- 



