ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 15 



your butter product will not be sufficiently uniform to command tbe highest 

 market price. 



Do you make good butter and sell it at a grocery where the price paid 

 depends quite as much upon the amount of groceries you are in the habit 

 of purchasing, as upon the quality of your butter ? 



Do you trade with a man that handles butter only " to accommodate 

 the farmer," and to draw trade, and who is quite well satisfied if the profit 

 on your hutter cancels the loss on your neighbor's grease — only provided 

 he gets a good grocery trade from both of you ? Then you do not exercise 

 that skill in disposing of your product that is commensurate with the skill 

 employed in your dairy room, or with* that which the groceryman exercises. 

 If you habitually make poor butter, I can honestly recommend to you 

 the corner grocery, as the very best place to dispose of it. But if your 

 butter is first-class, and uniformly so, try the Elgin Board of Trade ; or at 

 least, find a man to deal with who has no goods that he expects to sell to 

 you or to your neighbor, and he will probably be willing to buy the butter 

 on its merits. 



The grocerymen are often loud in their complaints concerning the 

 quality of the butter brought to them by the average farmer. I have been 

 repeatedly told by them that not one-fifth of the butter marketed is first- 

 class. 



But the majority of farmers will not stop making poor butter ; this 

 condition of things will continue in spite of Agricultural Schools and 

 Dairymen's Conventions, in spite of the earnest and truthful statements so 

 often appearing in the dairy column of our agricultural papers, in spite of 

 all that may be said, and written, and invented by the Willards, the Arnolds, 

 the Morrows, the Warrings, the Hardins, and the Cooleys, this condition of 

 things will continue until the grocerymen shall be induced or forced to stop 

 ofi'ering a premium for salvey, frowey, streaked, buttermilky butter. 



If this Convention desires to promote the dairy interests of Illinois, 

 if it desires to improve the quality of the butter manufactured in the 

 numerous small dairies of this State, if it desires not simply the success of 

 its individual members, but the enlightenment and consequent success of 

 its brother farmers, who are at home, and whose forms never darken the 

 door of an assembly like this, if it is ambitious that the reputation of 

 western batter should be improved, let it make an earnest, a vigorous, and 

 a direct attach upon the grocerymen and their method of dealing with 

 butter makers. 



I am confident that the average quality of Illinois butter might be 



