174 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



they want it that way, and so the effort is made to keep the natural 

 shade of butter in June all the year round by putting a little coloring in 

 it in winter. 



Mr. Henderson: I will try and answer this question of this 75 cent 

 butter. Before butterine came into existence we could make enough but- 

 ter and sell it so it paid for farmers to keep their cows for milk, but 

 when oleomargarine came out butter went down to a low price and many 

 farmers went out of dairying, of course. I once run twenty-seven cows 

 on the farm and now have ten and twelve, because it will not pay 

 farmers running a large farming business. Anything else will pay 

 better than cows. 



A. As a matter of fact there is really no alarm on account of the 

 extreme high prices, even if the oleomargarine law should go into effect. 

 There are in this country at the present time thousands of cows whose 

 milk does not go into the production of butter, but which will imme- 

 diately be turned to the production of butter, notwithstanding the fact 

 that the oleomargarine law has not been passed, owing to the very high 

 prices which now exist, in the western states there are a large number 

 of cows which have not been milked at all this year; They anticipated 

 low prices and feed was high, and they allowed the calves to run to the 

 cows and never milked them. Another year there will be milk enough to 

 make butter. There is a large herd of young stock in the west which 

 will be producing butter in the next one or two years. But we want to 

 watch out for this. We have a good price for butter now, and aside from 

 the oleomargarine discussion, people are going to go back to dairying, 

 and in the course of two or three years butter will be down to twelve or 

 fourteen cents if we don't have some restrictive legislation on the fraud- 

 ulent oleo traffic to save us from that fate. 



Mr. Conklin: Why is it not the business of the men down at this 

 factory here and every other factory in the State of Illinois to push this 

 question before congress, instead of the farmers; why didn't they go at 

 work at it. * They are not caring about oleomargarine looking like butter? 



