ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 181 



according to quality, because when you touch a man's pocketbook 

 he learns wonderfully faster, and if you show him that you 

 honestly cannot pay for poor cream as much as you can pay for 

 good, most of them will improve the quality of their cream very 

 much. They may not admit it themselves, but somehow they 

 will do it. 



One of the few means of measuring the quality is determin- 

 ing the acidity of it when it comes to the creamery. It may 

 come sweet and you will have all sorts of bad flavors in it, but 

 testing the acidity of that cream as it is delivered will be a help 

 and often a great help in convincing the farmer that there is a 

 difference in his quality. 



I went out to one of the points where our cream comes from 

 and tested nearly every lot of cream that came in. It was 

 almost laughable to stand there and see the looks on the faces of 

 the different farmers as they watched the results, to see if their 

 cream was going to be pink or not. After they went out you 

 would hear them say, " Mine passed all right," and another man 

 whose cream showed too much acidity, would say, " I don't 

 believe that fellow knew anything about it." There is generally 

 a little mystery. They do not understand it, and somehow when 

 we do not understand a thing we have a good deal of respect for 

 it, as a rule. 



So the alkali test may be used for determining the acidity 

 of cream when it is delivered to the factory. It does not seem 

 necessary for me to test every lot of cream every day, so I sug- 

 gest that in the weigh room the acidity of cream from different 

 lots may be determined as follows : 



(Let me add a little explanation.) We have to adopt a 

 standard of acidity for cream. In pasteurizing milk, we gen- 

 erally say we will not accept for pasteurization any milk that has 

 over .2 of 1 per cent acidity; in other words, our pipette full of 

 milk must not use over twenty cubic centimeters of this alkaline 

 solution in order to pass muster. If you will adopt the same 

 plan for cream you are sure of having a sweet cream. It may 

 have stable odors — this test will not detect or improve stable 



