ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN*S ASSOCIATION 47 



Like rulers generally, they have managed to draw good pay, while 

 their subjects (the dairymen) have been gradually approaching im- 

 poverishment. 



It should not escape the attention of dairymen that the ten- 

 dency of business, as to sales of butter and cheese, under the guid- 

 ance of leading men among the enterprising proprietors of factories 

 has been for the last year and a half, to sell on commission, instead 

 of on the board of trade, as formerly. The board of trade was es- 

 tablished by dairymen to prevent that sacrifice of their products re- 

 sulting from sending them away to commission men to sell. 



Commission men in vain assayed to thwart,on the start, the suc- 

 cess of the board of trade. After it became a success, and they could 

 only get the dairy products by purchasing them on the board, they 

 came and bought them and paid good prices, and the dairymen re- 

 ceived their reasonable reward. The commission men, shrewd gen- 

 tlemen, became members, gradually they obtained control, and, as a 

 result, to-day comparitively few sales are effected upon the board of 

 trade, and thereby loss of their proper profits ensues to the dairy- 

 men. Several of the leading proprietors of factories (men who have 

 the selling of immense amounts of butter and cheese belonging to 

 dairymen) are to-day carrying on commission business in Chicago. 

 Unless dairymen lift their voice against it, determinedly, the ex- 

 tinguishment of the board of trade — to them and them only, a most 

 valuable institution — will soon take place. The agencies of dissolu- 

 tion are insidiously at work, and dairymen only are interested in 

 staymg them. And, unless they make their power felt to this end, 

 the destruction of the board of trade will be accomplished. 



The remedy is for dairymen to insist upon their products being 

 sold on the board of trade, and watch closely all proprietors of facto- 

 ries who are also carrying on a commission business. Dairymen have 

 the power and the right, and it is, it seems to me, of the utmost im- 

 portance to them to prevent the ruin of the board of trade, and this 

 can only be done by demanding that their products shall be sold 

 thereon, and that they shall not be sent oflf to be sold on commission. 

 Another fact dairymen should note, and that is, that the North- 

 western Dairymen's Association has passed substantially from the 

 control of dairymen and is now in the hands of commission men, 

 proprietors of factories, editors of papers, manufacturers of cheese - 

 boxes, vendors of patent inventions, salt, annatto etc., and merchants 



