9(1 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



for the grain. These old methods have been superseded by 

 by various kinds of mowers and harvesters. The spinning 

 wheel and loom are also things of the past in the farm home. 

 The wives and daughters have lost interest in this branch 

 of labor that only a few short years ago was a part of the 

 work of the farm^ but now done in the factories, with a 

 greater amount of machinery and experienced workmen. Also 

 the inventive genius of the present age is fast ridding the 

 farmers wives and daughters of the care of the dairy. In 

 my girlhood, a farmer's daughter would have been considered 

 below par in her education if she had lived on a dairy farm 

 and did not know how to take care of the milk and produce 

 from it a quality of butter or cheese that would compare 

 favorably with the Orange Co. brand. All these years 

 there have been improvements in the methods of caring for 

 the dairy products until the farmer's wife and daughter are 

 nearly rid of this branch of farm industry. The milk is taken 

 to the factories, where they have better facilities for making 

 it into butter and cheese or condensing it and give greater 

 X-)rofit to the farmer. Whiie in many instances it adds to Ms 

 labor, but relieves the wi^es and daughters, and they with 

 but few exceptions rejoice in the change, and are not as inter- 

 ested in gaining information along this line, as when it was 

 considered their work. The time is not far distant when it 

 wall be as hard to find a farmer's daughter who knows how 

 to make a tub of butter, as it is now to find one who would 

 know to take a fleece of wool and convert it into cloth, as 

 our grandmothers did. While the products of the dairy are 

 cared for to a very great extent in the factories, the wife and 

 mother has more time for the other household work, and the 

 daughters ha*ve turned their attention to various other occu- 

 pations — teachers, stenographers and the finer arts — seeking 

 for some remunerative occupation outside of the farm home. 



Some farmers wives render as a reason for the lack of 

 interest in dairy conventions and the manner in which the 

 milk is cared for, that it not only relieves them of the hard 

 work, but they are also relieved of the privilege of a pocket- 

 book with a little money to call their own, but are obliged 

 to ask their liege lord and master for every penny they have, 

 which still has a tendency to lessen their interests in con- 



