6o 



DAIRY INTERESTS AS THEY RELATE TO OTHER 

 BRANCHES OF AGRICULTURE. 



Milton George, Esq., Editor Western Rural, Chicago: 

 The barbarous and half civilized races of the Orient may 

 have been content with the lacteal product of the goat or the 

 camel, but with the civilized peoples from the patriarchal days 

 of Abraham to the present time, the dairy business has figured 

 as a prominent feature in agricultural pursuits, as it relates to 

 that branch represented by the cattle interest. In fact, the cow 

 for a long period of time has held the intimate relation to house- 

 hold economy, as a sort of family step-mother, or did while the 

 butter and cheese were made from milk and cream. 



A wholesale rivalry has stimulated the industry in the direc- 

 tion of attaining the highest degree of excellence. The advance- 

 ment has been marvelous during the past twenty years, not only 

 in the magnitude of the business, but in the uniform and improved 

 quality of the product. The time, labor and patience neces- 

 sary to attain these results have been enormous, and at the 

 propitious moment when American dairy products were gaining 

 the favor and confidence of home and foreign consumers, and a 

 market found at remunerative prices, there arose a satanic rival 

 in the form of butter imitations. Not a productive rivalry, but 

 a competition born of modern science, backed by insatiable greed 

 of capital, by which the refuse fats of any dead or decaying 

 animals may be converted, with other adulterations, into the 

 appearance of pure butter, cheese or lard. The frauds should 

 be entirely prohibited, though we have not taken this radical 

 position publicly before, by strict laws and severe penalties 

 and should include all food adulterations. In spite of all the 

 legislation we have had upon the subject in our efforts to regu- 

 late the manufacture and sale of the stuff, consumers are eating 

 it by the ton in Chicago and elsewhere without knowing it. The 

 law stops at the critical point. Hotel keepers, restaurant and 

 boarding house keepers are not compelled by the law to inform 



