ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN S ASSOCIATION. 9 



valued at, something over $30 per head, giving us over $30,000,000 in cows alone 

 in the State of Illinois. Add to this the production of butter and cheese and the 

 value of tools, machinery, etc., you will see it gives a very large figure. We 

 are all aware that there is an insidious enemy encroaching upon this territory 

 which, if not sooner or later destroyed, will destroy this industry— the greatest 

 that has ever been developed in these Northwestern States. 



When we consider for a moment the jeopardy in which this industry has 

 been placed by a few men engaged in the manufacture of a counterfeit product, 

 I am surprised to know that greater action and greater effort has not been made 

 to suppress the manufacture and sale of this counterfeit product. 



If I should locate here in Belvidere and undertake to manufacture counter- 

 feit money, every citizen in the town would cry out and every officer of the 

 government would have his hand down on me at once ; but I may locate here 

 and start a butterine manufactory and manufacture the counterfeit with a coun- 

 terfeit brand upon it and no one one would say "Nay " to me. There is no law 

 to prohibit me from counterfeiting food product. There is no law to prevent 

 me from manufacturing butterine and placing the brand "Witbeck Creamery" 

 upon it if I please. No one can stop me. Do you know that in the city of 

 Chicago alone, in the space of four months, the butterine manufacturers can put 

 on the market more butterine than these one million cows of the State of Illi- 

 nois can make of pure butter in twelve months? And can you tell me that this 

 industry is not in peril? That it does not call for wise counsel and for laws 

 that will save it, and save the men and save the farms, and save the farmers' 

 wives who have built up this industry? 



It seems to me that the time has come, is already at hand, when something 

 ought to be done, when this Association that we represent, being a State organ- 

 ization, should take the lead in this movement and put forth some effort that 

 would suppress the sale of a counterfeit product. 



There is no sense and there is no reason why a man or any set of men 

 should go to work and willfully manufacture that which they are afraid to sell 

 under its true name. Why, stop and consider for a moment and look around 

 you. I see my friends who have been engaged in farming for years, and who 

 by reason of their intelligence and their patient toil have been enabled to secure 

 the confidence of those with whom they deal, and thereby get their heads above 

 the tide. Is their business to be slaughtered by these men and by this product? 

 It seems to me that our law-makers ought to step in and give us some law by 

 which this industry may not be driven from the land. 



A few weeks ago I met Senator Cullom at Springfield, and in a hurried con- 

 versation about the dairy industry of the northern part of the State he said the 

 most damnable outrage that was ever perpetrated upon any honest industry was 

 perpetrated at Chicago, when the State Board of Agriculture admitted butterine 

 to be exhibited in the Fat Stock Show beside the pure dairy butter. Let me 

 tell you, it is only a question of time, in my opinion, and not a very long time 

 either, when every creamery, every cheese factory in the State of Illinois, will 

 be closed up unless something is done to prevent the manufacture of a counter- 

 feit upon pure butter. It is utterly impossible for the farmer who feeds his 

 cows with the grain that is grown upon his farm to compete with these men, 

 who go into the slaughter houses and buy the refuse fat and manufacture it 



