ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 53 



of milk. To meet this great demand, wheat farms were hur- 

 riedly stocked with cows, and for the first and only time in its 

 history, Chicago was overstocked with a desirable comodity. 



To utilize this over supply, farmers began to manufacture 

 cheese as well as butter. Dr. Joseph Tefft, to whose efforts in 

 promoting and systematizing the production, manufacture and 

 marketing of dairy goods, the farmers of the great northwest 

 owe an inestimable debt of gratitude, with Mr. Isaac Wenzer 

 visited the dairy centers of the east, and upon leport of their 

 observations, many cheese and some butter factories were erected. 

 The Chicago dealers put Kane county cheese into boxes branded 

 " Orange County, N. Y., Cheese," and quoted and sold it at two 

 cents above the price of that not so fraudulently branded. To 

 remedy this wrong, the Elgin Dairy Board of Trade was organ- 

 ized in 1872, and during the following thirty years the sale of 

 dairy products upon the open board reached the enormous sum 

 of over $147,000,000, and for the last four years has averaged 

 about $1,000,000 per month. 



Borden's Condensed Milk Company has paid Kane county 

 dairymen many millions of dollars, and Elgin quotes the price of 

 butter for the markets of the world. Not a pound of milk or 

 grain has been shipped out from that station for years — -thousands 

 of car-loads of feed have been shipped in, and the wheat impov- 

 erished soil has been restored to its pristine fertility 



Such is a brief and very inadequate sketch of the beginning 

 and development of the immense dairy industry of Northern. 

 Illinois. 



If the farmers and business men of Effingham county could 

 (or rather would) complete the hasty sketch, and realize its full 

 significance of the future possibilities that lie before them, the 

 seats at every dairymen's or farmers' association, held among 

 you would be crowded with interested, active, paying members. 



I have been absent from these association meetings quite 

 twice the years Rip Van Winkle slept, yet I hear the echoes of 

 the olden times, when we too talked about casine, protein and 

 butter fats, and of the milk veins and milk escutcheons which 



