ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
35 
that if his butter was worth forty cents per pound, that tub of Illinois 
butter was worth fifty. A sample may be seen here by any one who 
may feel interested. I conclude with the hope that my remarks may 
imbue some of the dairymen present with the idea that there is always 
room on top. 
THE CREAM GATHERING SYSTEM. 
BY JOSEPH SAMPSON, STORM LAKE, IOWA. 
Gentlemen :—Being requested by your honorable secretary to 
make a statement at your December meeting in regard to the advan¬ 
tages of the cream gathering system, adopted by myself where I re¬ 
side, during the past season, I would briefly state, the advantages of 
this new system consists in its bringing a greater number of patrons 
scattered over a wider area into association than could be done under 
the old system. At our factory, during the past season, we gathered 
cream at a distance of over twenty-five miles from the factory—that 
is, we took in cream, hauled in a direct line to our factory twenty-five 
miles ; besides other cream that was hauled to a railway station the 
same distance, and then sent by freight train forty miles. From all 
of this cream we made good butter. At our factory during the month 
of July we made on an average 1,600 pounds of butter per day. This 
butter all sold at the highest quoted prices for Iowa creamery butter 
in the City of New York. This simple statement I make to show 
that under this new system introduced by Mr. Fairlamb, a wide range 
of country can be gone over, and a valuable product saved from the 
Chicago classification of “grease butter.” We were able to pay our 
patrons more for their cream .than they could have sold their butter 
for, if same had been sent to Chicago. . 
We were paying throughout the summer months, fifteen to six¬ 
teen cents per guage for cream. Taking ioo pounds of milk to yield 
four guages of cream, or four pounds of butter (roughly computed) 
we were thus paying our patrons as much for their cream on the farm 
as was being paid in the eastert part of our state by the factory ope¬ 
rators, who bought milk by the hundred weight, and raised the cream 
in their factories. During the summer in Delaware County, Iowa, 
200 miles east of us, farmers who put in their labor of hauling milk to 
the creamery, received fifty-five to seventy cents per hundred pounds. 
Average, say sixty-five cents per hundred pounds. At same time 
our farmers were receiving from the same quantity of milk, for the 
cream alone, sixty to sixty-four cents. These figures are approximate; 
but when it is taken into account that under this new system we can 
gather in under one management a large number of patrons, scat¬ 
tered over the wide area named, the economic advantages are ap¬ 
parent. 
For a sparsely-settled country, it is the best system that can be 
adopted. It enables the farmers to retain their skim milk on the 
farm, in good condition for feeding their calves. 
