38 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



BUTTEK AND CHEESE MAKING. 



J. H. BROOMELL, AURORA. 



The subject assigned by the programme to me is an old one . It has been 

 so ably treated in its various phases, at the annual conventions from year 

 to year, it would seem that nothing more could be said. Indeed, I have de- 

 bated in my own mind what I could say to interest and instruct such an 

 audience as the one before me. I have decided to venture upon a little re" 

 view of the tendencies of the times, calling up the new experiences of manu- 

 facturers, which have come to them through the closer competition, and new 

 machinery introduced during the past year. 



It is evident that the manufacturer of butter and cheese is becoming, 

 from year to year, more scientific ; or, in other words, the scientific princi- 

 ples underlying the different processes are now better understood than ever 

 before, and the tendency of the practical work of manufacturing is to get 

 nearer and nearer to the line indicated by the work of the scientist. Manu- 

 facturers are assisted in this by the inventor who comes to them with new 

 machinery for testing milk to ascertain its fatty qualities, and to trace adul- 

 terations; with new devices for separating the cream from the milk; with im- 

 provements in churn and butter- workers and cheese vats and presses and 

 heating apparatus. Indeed, a man engaged in the production of these two 

 great commodities cannot survive the close competition that presses upon 

 him, unless he be wide awake in his business and ever on the alert for meth- 

 ods and devices to enable him to cut more garments out of the cloth than 

 he has hitherto been able to do. As good wheat is essential to the produc- 

 tion of high grade flour, so is good milk indispensible in the manufacture of 

 fine butter and cheese. When I say good milk I mean milk the product of 

 healthy, well fed cows; clean milk, well cooled before leaving the dairy farm, 

 in case of transportation to a factory. With all the lecturing, talk, counsel 

 and advice we have heard during the last fifteen years on the importance of 

 clean, well-cooled milk, I doubt whether one half of the milk now produced 

 in the great State of Illinois receives that attention between the cow and the 

 manufacturers that is essential to the production of high grade goods. If 

 this be so (and I think it is) the careful, painstaking half of the milk pro- 

 ducers suffer a gross injustice in being loaded down with the sins of omission 

 and commission of the other half, who are too lazy, too careless, or too in- 

 different to produce milk of as high grade as the problem demands. 



My thought has reference, of course, to associate manufacturing, where 

 all milk is taken at the same value. This problem of holding milk and 

 cream up to a nearly uniform standard of excellence is still one of the most 

 difficult with which we have to deal. Close competition between manufac- 

 turers for the control of the milk in a given district has been the chief cause 

 of leniency which works out harmful results. Could we tighten the screws 

 upon the careless dairymen without it resulting in the oft-repeated threat of 

 taking his milk to some other factory equally convenient, we might accom- 

 plish much more. I see no better way to maintain a high standard of milk 

 and cream than to keep the screws well tightened and at the same time ap- 



