138 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



beef and pork, and will array one class of cattle farmers against another, 

 and any movement that doubles its cost will bring down the wrath of a 

 mass of consumers, and their name is legion, who are unable to buy but- 

 ter as good as it should be and who will stubbornly dispute the right of 

 the public under any pretext to put an artificial cost on a staple article 

 of food, while every compound that originated in the cow goes on mas- 

 querading as butter and protected by the law, and while the natural life- 

 time of milk is so generally lengthened by the use of preservatives pow- 

 erful enough to prevent the development of living organisms. 



I tell you frankly there should be more house cleaning at home in 

 these matters. The consuming public is both irritated and frightened, 

 and it is going to do something. What is does will not be noisy, but I 

 promise you it will be effective. It is discouraged with cheese and has 

 practically quit eating it; it is disgusted with the available butter and 

 is strongly inclined to butterine; it is growing afraid of milk on the score 

 of health and is using less of it, with a growing disposition to still further 

 decrease its use; it has practically abandoned cheese without a substi- 

 tute,, and it will not take it long to repeat the treatment to butter when 

 it is behaving even worse than cheese ever behaved, and when so cheap 

 and convenient a substitute is so ready at hand. With our rapidly grow- 

 ing population this decreased use of dairy products is less noticeable, but. 

 it is there nevertheless, and there is the root of the difficulty in the dairy 

 business. 



Now dairy products are essentially matters of luxury and not nec- 

 essities, and dairymen seem to have forgotten or not to have noticed the 

 wonderful development in. the use of articles of luxury in the last decade 

 or two. Take the single article of candy. A few years ago we had only 

 the regulation stick and the impossible mixed candies, half terra alba, 

 and handled with shovels like coal. Now we have the most delicate 

 creams and caramels put up in the daintiest perfumed boxes at any- 

 where from 25c to 50c, 75c and even $1.00 a pound. Yet the standard 

 sweet they contain is worth anywhere from three to five cents a pound. 

 The rest is addition to the flavor or the appearance, and we who eat it 



