ILLINOIS STATE DAIEYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 17 



by a concert of action on the part of grocerymen. No one dealer, however 

 fully he may realize the importance of such action, can alone adopt the 

 plan of buying butter on its merits, since it would inevitably result in 

 diminishing his trade by more than one-half. But by unison of action, 

 and the adoption of a system of inspection sanctioned by law, by which 

 the grade of every tub of butter should be determined before it is offered 

 for sale, and the employment of inspectors of known ability and integrity 

 an untold amount of good might be done, and thousands of dollars added 

 to the annual income of the dairymen of Illinois. The trade would 

 then become educational, and hundreds of people would be taught what 

 they do not now know, viz. : that they are not making, neither do they 

 know how to make a good quality of butter. 



Conventions like this would multiply, old cellars would be cleaned out, 

 the cows would be given a good bed of straw, the churn would get an extra 

 scalding, milk containing manure would be thrown to the pigs, the scales 

 would be used in salting butter, proper dairy rooms would be built, and the 

 amount of soap-grease put upon the market in butter tubs, would be 

 reduced to a minimum. Until some system is adopted by the country and 

 small city grocerymen, which will insure the recognition of quality in 

 butter, the successful dairyman must seek some other market. Many good 

 butter makers have already learned this, and others will not be slow in 

 following their example. 



One of the first requisites to a high degree and certainty of success, is 

 a complete knowledge of one's own business affairs. It is not sufficient 

 that we should know that our income during a certain year has been one 

 thousand dollars more than our expenses. But that it may continue to be 

 so, or improve, it is necessary that we should know the exact source of each 

 dollar of income. The almost wonderful success of many of the dairy farms 

 in and around Elgin, is not so much because they have had a good market 

 for their milk. Almost any farmer in Illinois may realize nearly or quite 

 as much per gallon for milk as those can who are within three miles of the 

 Elgin Milk Condensing Company. The success of these dwellers in Elgin 

 is not so much, I say, because they can get ten cents a gallon for their milk in 

 summer, and thirteen cents in winter, as it is because circumstances have forced 

 them to see the relation between feed and milk. They have thoroughly 

 learned the fact of which many of the farmers in Illinois are at present 

 ignorant, that the more a cow can be made to eat and digest, the more 

 profitable does the animal become. They have learned what nineteen- 

 twentieths of the farmers of Illinois do not believe, that to leave corn 

 standing in the field until it is time to husk and crib it, is a wasteful 



