58 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



manufacturers ? I should make this outline as safe counsel to follow for the 

 year 1884, making such chiuges for the better thereafter as experience may 

 suggest: Do not manufacture a single skim cheese from the 20th of May 

 until the 1st of August Between those dates turn all the milk into either 

 butter or full-cream cheese, allowing the skimmed milk to go back to the 

 farms to be fed to the needy calves and pigs. After the 1st of August, for 

 two months it might be safe to venture on good h^lf-skims, and still later to 

 make a twenty-four hour skim ; but it is wise to discontinue for all future 

 time the now common practice of holding milk forty-eight hours, or longer, 

 and then turning the skimmed milk into cheese. This outline, I think, if 

 followed faithfully by the factorymen, will place them upon safe ground. 



It is no longer a matter of choice witli them as to whether they will adopt 

 it. They must do it or lose their patronage among the dairymen, as I will 

 try to show. Another such season as that of 1883 will scatter the milk away 

 from the butter and cheese factories and send it to other factories making 

 full-cream cheese or butter alone ; and some will be kept on the farms and 

 the cream sold to cream-gatherers. 



Dairymen will not, during another season, give the skimmed milk away 

 to cover the cost of its manufacture into cheese. They have had a lasting 

 and sufficient dose of that kind of medicine. Factorymen must assure them 

 that no such mismanagement will be suffered hereafter. 



It is the money considera'ion which forms the clinching argument in this 

 case. Most butter factories made better dividends for June, July and Aug- 

 ust, 1883, than did the butter and cheese factories, and in the first instance 

 the dairyman got his skimmed milk back for home feed. The full-cream 

 cheese factories beat the buffer and ch- ese factories for the same period from 

 ten to twenty cents per hundred, so you see the money argument is directly 

 opposed to the skim cheese. 



But, some factoryman says be cannot afford to run his factory on butter 

 or full cream cheese or both at the usual commission charged for manufac- 

 turing. I answer that he can better afford to do that than to lose his busi- 

 ness. His rela'ions with the dairymen are s mewhat mutual, and he must 

 manage his businef-s in such a way as to protect the interest of the dairymen 

 or he canriot expect t* hold them as patrons. Mor over, the expense of run- 

 ning the milk into full cream cheese or butter a'one is l^^ss than that of mak- 

 ing it i'lto butter and cheese, hence the point is not well made. If the man- 

 ufacturer camwt afford to operate his factory on the usual commission of two 

 and four, he had much beiter raise the price of making than to place upon 

 the market a commodity that nobody wants. 



Is there danger of overstocking the market with butter and good cheese ? 

 Most certa nly, no. The market for both during the summer of 1883 was a 

 healthy one regu'ated. mostly, by the law of supply and demand. It was 

 less affected by speculative forces than during the summer of 1882. Butter 

 settled to a price during mid-summer which enabled exporters to operate to 

 a considerable extent, and furnished inducements to cold-storage men to lay 

 in a reasonable supply. The first was consumed sp»^edily on the other shore. 

 The last has been going out gradually during the autumn months at reason- 

 able but paying prices. Thus the surplus make was cared for, yet the price 

 did not go so low as to discourage the dairymen. 



