FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION 89 



be done with milk by the proper sanitary conditions and cooling 

 it rapidly, as soon as possible after milking." 



About the year i860 the number of dairy cows kept had 

 grown to such an extent that more milk was produced than 

 could be handled as such, and with this over-supply came the 

 temporary rise of the cheese industry in Illinois. I am giving 

 rather fully the details of the rise and fall of that industry since 

 it involves a principle not to be overlooked in any system of 

 manufacturing, especially that of edible and perishable products. 



The following from an address by J. H. Wanzer, one of 

 our pioneer dairymen, gives an account of the early start of 

 the cheese industry in Illinois : 



''W'e remember our first experiment in making cheese. We 

 had, on a June morning in i860, taken our milk to Elgin, but, 

 finding the previous day's milk had been returned with notice 

 that they were so flooded with milk that they could not use any 

 more of ours for some time to come, we took the previous day's 

 milk into the wagon with that just brought and started for 

 home, calling at the grocery of James Knott, purchasing a large 

 wash tub, and a little farther on to the meat market of George 

 Roberts and bought a calf's rennet, and upon our arrival home 

 under the directions of Mother Herrick made our first cheese, 

 putting it to press under a temporarily constructed press and to 

 curing in one of the rooms of the house. We soon partitioned 

 off a part of the woodshed and obtained a larger wooden tub, 

 with a smaller tin tub to go inside of the wooden one, heating 

 our milk and whey by warming water on the stove and turning 

 it between the two tubs. Thus we worked for three seasons, 

 curing our cheese in a part of our house. In 1867 Father Her- 

 rick built a small cheese factory, 16 by 40 feet, and purchased 

 a cheese vat and screw presses from H. A. Rowe, Hudson, Ohio. 

 In this small factory we made the cheese from the milk of our 

 own cows, which had increased from 15 to 40 cows, and as the 

 supply far exceeded the milk demand of Chicago, we commenc- 

 ed to take in milk from our neighbors, after running up our vat 

 full three times a day. We have always carried the impression 

 that this little cheese factory, 16 by 40 feet, was the first west 



