THIRTY-SIXTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 33 



quality of their products unless it can be shown that there is 

 more money in it than in the old way. I believe that whether a 

 man produces milk or cream or butter he will, in the 

 long run, be paid for it on the basis of the quality of it. When 

 the product at last gets to the consumer its price depends almost 

 wholly upon its quality, and there is no reason why the producer 

 of the high quality goods should not get recompense in propor- 

 tion, and almost always he does. For instance, it has long been 

 a fashion to pay five cents a quart for milk, and people think 

 that any higher price is a high and undesirable one. But every 

 one knows that those milk dealers who are producing a high 

 quality of milk are not only getting the high price but that they 

 get it easily. The people who pay ten cents or more a quart are 

 not the people who do the kicking. They demand and get high 

 class milk and are willing to pay for it. The people who want 

 the best are never fully supplied and hence the demand is always 

 present and the market for that kind of goods is always present 

 and sure. That's a thing that exists in all lines of business. If 

 you put up a dozen horses for sale, the first one sold will be the 

 best one and the last one to go is the poor one. 



If there is any product of the farm that is actually sold all 

 the time on its merits, that product is butter. In the butter 

 houses in New York, when a buyer comes in looking for butter, 

 he tastes of it and if it doesn't suit him, he goes on to a better 

 grade and when he finds the best he asks the price. He doesn't 

 care what the price of the poor stuff is. There is never any trouble 

 to sell good butter. The poor butter must seek a buyer, not 

 only at a low price, but its sale is slower and more uncertain. 

 People will not pay a high price and suffer in the quality of the 

 goods they receive. So that an improvement in the quality of 

 % butter means a higher net return and a quicker sale. 



There is another reason. We visited the St. Louis market 

 this morning and every merchant there had oleomargarine for 

 sale. It was labeled "Fox River Dairy," "Wisconsin Creamery'* 

 and "Elgin," but not a pound of it was butter. The price was 

 about twenty-six to thirty cents a pound. Now it has always 

 seemed to me that oleomargarine does not compete with butter, 



