18 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Committee on Membership, consistinpf of J. H. White, J. P. Bartlett,and 

 W. W. McDonald, was appointed by the President. . 



" SOME LESSORS IN FHsTANCE, FOR THE CREAMERY PATRON." 



BY C. C. BTJELL, OF ROCK FALLS, ILL. 



Any business, to be permanent, must make reasonable returns for the 

 capital employed, and give fair compensation for the labor bes'owed upon it, 

 otherwise it will be abandoned ; or, if continued at all, it will be done under 

 the protest of economic law. In addition to the ordinary circumstances at- 

 taching to business enterprise, the creamery business is essentially and 

 peculiarly co-operative. It thrives with the thrift of all concerned— owner 

 and patrons. It falls only with loss to all. The conditions of success, there- 

 fore, to the patrons, are included in the conditions of success to the cream- 

 ery, and vica versa. 



The object of this paper is to suggest some of these conditions, and some 

 of the instances of violation of them. 



It is hardly necessary to discuss the case in which peculiarity of soil or 

 climate, the greater profitableness of some other kind of industry, or other 

 reason, would so restrict the size and number of dairy herds as to make the 

 locality a barren dairy region. Notwithstanding the brilliant achievements 

 of the dairy industry, it is safe to say that it may not be profitable in any and 

 every locality. Given the soil, the climate, the water, the people intelligent 

 and disposed toward the exacting duties of this business, there are still many 

 questions to be considered and many mistakes to be avoided. 



It has been the ppt idea in this country that competition is the corrective 

 of air industrial evils. Competition, without doubt, holds an important 

 place among the industrial forces, but may be carried so'far as to defeat the 

 very objects it is adapted to subserve, when intelligently encouraged. Car- 

 ried to the extent of employing two persons or more to do the work of one, of 

 absorbing capital without the full employment of it, becomes destructive 

 and expensive. ;,We find, for instance, in many towns, a large number of 

 commercial establishments doing business at an immense profit on single 

 transactions, but, the transactions are so few and so divided up among strug- 

 gling competitors, that neither secures a profitable or even a respectable 

 business. With choice cuts of meat, from twelve to eighteen cents a pound, 

 and butchers' stock at three and four cents, we often see butcher shops mul- 

 tiply, but the price of meat us i ally remains the same. Indeed, the very increase 

 of middle-man establishments beyond the employment of these to their full 

 capacity, and the consequent full utilization of the capital and labor employed 

 IS a sure loss to somebody, and, if it does not all go to the producer, it is al- 

 most always shatred by him. 



One of the greatest burdens which the creamery business has to carry to- 

 day is the excessive number of its creameries beyond legitimate demands. 

 The co-operative idea, so far as it enters into this business, implies the most 

 profitable use possible of the resources employed in it^ both of patron and 

 creamery owner, and a fair and equitable distribution of the profits. Said a 

 large creamery owner to me, recently : " I find the comparative value of my 



