ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN S ASSOCIATION. 293 



On the other hand, the factory men seem to think the patrons 

 are either watering or skimming their milk. 



Now, my opinion is, that this nonsense about any special 

 honesty among the farmers is, or ought to be exploded, as you 

 will find a certain percentage of honest and dishonest men in 

 every walk of life; and while the farmers contain no larger per 

 cent, of honest men than any other class the cheese factory men 

 and creamery men contain no larger per cent, of dishonest men 

 than the farmers. But the fact remains that this distrust is 

 there, and it stunts the growth of dairying just as badly as the 

 northwest blizzard stunts the orchards of Dakota. 



It may be claimed that the solution of this difficulty will be 

 the formation of co-operative factories in the strictest sense of 

 the word, but, will the farmer who would water his milk be less 

 inclined to cheat his fellow farmers? and will the unwieldy 

 management of a committee of three or five be apt to be more 

 honest than that of the present factory man? I fear not. And 

 yet I am inclined to believe that our way out of the woods is 

 through a return to the strictly co-operative system. Till then 

 the farmers will hardly learn that the success of the factory man 

 is identical with their own. 



Another weak point is, that the factory men are inclined to 

 secure the services of the cheapest butter or cheese makers they 

 can find, and also to allow him too little help, so that he never 

 finds time to study or profit by the many new methods and im- 

 provements that are being followed or adopted ele where. You 

 must not think that while I point to a few rents in the radiant 

 garment of our modern dairying I am not alive to the enormous 

 improvements we have made in the last decade, but I feel sure 

 that a dozen years ahead we shall look back with a pitying 

 smile on our present idea of modern dairying. 



I fancy I can see far enough in the future to promise you we 



shall have dairy experimental stations with well equipped labor- 

 atories. 



I can promise you that we shall have dairy schools where 

 farmers sons and daughters may receive instruction in modern 

 methods of butter and cheese making. 



