18 SUMMARY ANNUAL REPORT 



operators are not competent to do the work, through ignorance of the 

 methods necessary to make a correct test and not a few operators have 

 said, when their attention was called to their improper methods, that 

 they had not sufficient time to bother with it. 



The equipment in many stations is poor and inadequate. Hardly 

 any of them are equipped with a bath to bring the contents of test 

 bottles to the right temperature before reading the tests and many of 

 the operators had never heard of such a thing. This is a serious 

 matter, as it is impossible without it to get a correct reading in cold 

 weather where a machine which is turned by hand is used. Not one 

 of the stations was equipped with means of testing the acid used to 

 make a test. Acid too weak to make a correct test was found in 

 several places. Scales for weighing samples of cream for testing, were 

 found in many places to be not accurate. 



Cream Stations a Grave Prol)lem: Added to the improper methods 

 of the cream station operators, is the utter lack of proper storage fa- 

 cilities for cream at the most of those places. Many of the stations are 

 rear rooms of general stores where almost everything that is sold at 

 a general store is piled up and the cream is kept in an atmosphere 

 charged with the attendant dust and smells of such a place. Some- 

 times the station is an annex to a store or meat shop, which is little 

 more than a shed, where the temperature cannot be controlled, fre- 

 quently going above 100 degrees in summer and as low in winter as 

 it gets outside. Cream frequently boils over the tops of the cans in 

 summer, in those places, and unless removed to a warmer place, must 

 certainly freeze in winter. 



Cream Price Situation: It was found that prices differed greatly 

 in certain sections of eastern and northern Montana during the spring 

 and summer, but with the approach of winter the wider gap in prices 

 has gradually closed. As very little cream is produced during the fall 

 and winter in those parts of the state, the apparently good price which 

 is now being paid will be of only slight benefit to the farmers living 

 there. In western Montana comparatively good prices have prevailed 

 throughout the year. The disparity in prices between western Mon- 

 tana and the eastern part of the state is due to the better quality of 

 cream produced by the dairymen of the former, the fact that prices are 

 stabilized there by the competition afforded by one of the best man- 

 aged and successful co-operative creameries in the west, and by their 

 closer proximity to a good market. There are very few cream sta- 

 tions west of the main range of the Rocky Mountains. 



The result of all this lack of a sufficient understanding of the dairy 

 business and I may say too, a lack of proper regard for the rights of 

 others, is a low grade of products with no profit and nothing but dis- 

 couragement for everybody engaged in the business. On November 21, 

 1922, at the four principal markets of the east, creamery butter, scor- 

 ing 92 and known as extras, brought an average of 51 cents. Creamery 

 butter scoring 88 brought an average of 40 cents, a difference of 11 

 cents. It has been said that butter scoring 92 cannot be produced in 

 Montana, but that is not true, for several tubs exhibited at the Mon- 

 tana State Fair scored more than that, some scoring 93 or over. With 

 proper care and attention paid to the production and handling of 

 cream, a grade of butter can be made in Montana as high as any in 

 the world. 



The Legislature at nearly every session in the last twenty years, 

 has taken a turn at fixing the dairy laws of the state until now we 

 have quite a number that are ambiguous, conflicting and so worded 

 that they cannot be enforced. Examples are the dairy trade marks law 

 and the law attempting to prohibit sale of colored oleomargarine, use- 

 less because of its wording. 



