ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
43 
dairyman with his co-operative creameries, cheap grains and pasturage, will undersell 
as, even if the quality of his creamery butter was no better than that of our farm 
dairy butter; but if we imitate his methods, and force down the cost of production 
and manufacture and at the same time realize any increase in price owing to the bet¬ 
tering the quality, we may yet so secure our position that we can safely invite 
competition. 
In Ohio, seventy counties are covered over with small dairies, containing from 
four to ten cows each, and even more in many cases, and the signs of the times are 
that these scattered, isolated dairies are to combine upon the co-operative or cream¬ 
gathering system of some kind and make a brand of butter so high in quality that it 
shall be sold in the great dairy markets for cash, rather than now at country stores for 
calico and store pay generally. I do not argue for exclusive butter-making. There 
is a place and a market for good cheese, and in the dense dairy districts butter and 
cheese can probably be made profitably, but it is in large territories not so situated 
that this cream-gathering system comes as a pioneer, yet in full development, to give 
two things : A better butter and a double price, and that with the elements of labor 
reduced to the lowest limit. 
The economy of the time in manufacture is found in co-operation. The dairy is 
ao exception to the rule, for at the start it leaves five-sixths of the bulk and weight 
of the milk product at home ; and yet by the butter yield and the feeding value of the 
skim milk added, the results may be considered the full value of any combined butter 
ind cheese process, and if care and skill are brought into requisition, the new system 
will show best results, as we may see if the two and two make four rule is applied. 
In Ohio, three systems of co-operation, or cream-gathering, are in vogue : Cream 
buying, co-operative factories, and a value for cream based upon prices received for 
outteAn New Yofk, minus five or six cents per inch, to furnish a working margin for 
the maker. The greatest number of factories are purely individual creameries pay¬ 
ing a market rate per inch for cream, the prices varying with the months or the fluc¬ 
tuations of the market, but as this is a matter the organization or plan of working 
which, the Illinois dairymen are far better posted upon than we are in Ohio, we shall 
y\ve no further heed to it, but go on and see if the article of butter, called in the mar¬ 
ket cream-gathered, is the equal of the gathered milk butter, and how far it may be 
rated as superior to farm or dairy butter. Theory would say that as good butter can 
—or should be—made at the farm as the creamery, and that the whole milk factory 
should produce better butter, but as theory and practice are often at variance, the 
3 ream-gathered butter has the advantage, and why we may safely argue as due to the 
following causes : 
To make a first-class butter at a whole milk factory involves the strict compliance 
)f more rules than the average farmer cares to observe. The milk should reach the 
actory perfect, but there is no certainty of its being so. At the milk factory, milk is 
:he object of the farmer who produces it, and to him quality is not essential, so long 
is the measure indicates good yield, so that fair condition is about the only one rule 
:hat can be enforced. One dairy is well fed, petted, stabled, and soiled, pure water 
md wholesome food provided and fed with judgment and discretion; another tk shifts 
:'or itself,” chased by sharp biting curs, and thumped and knocked about generally ; 
while a third gets a scanty living out of sour or swampy pastures, drinks stagnant 
water, and has other conditions to contend with that cannot be harmonized with a 
irst quality of milk. The delivering of milk is a feature that operates against fine 
favored butter. The milk of one farm is churned for miles as it is borne along over 
’ough roads and on rougher wagons ; the milk of another dairy is actually cooked by 
ong standing in the hot sun. A dozen other features exist to reduce the butter value 
)f the milk, among which mention might be made of cans that are actually open, 
getting the full benefit of dust, rain, flying spatters of mud, dirty blankets and hands, 
md tiie “ smoking car ” features of the passenger traffic upon all milk-wagon routes. 
Over against this, what has the creamery to offer as an improvement V It shows 
m equal number of dairies with milk set alike in cans of the same pattern, and under 
ionditions that may be accepted as uniform. This cream is collected every day by a 
gatherer, who has the duty also of seeing that this rule of uniformity is enforced, and 
he rules generally observed. This cream gathered by one man, is placed in a closed 
;an that total y prevents churning of the cream while in transit, and with appliances 
hat avoid undue heat or cold, avoiding the miscellaneous treatment that milk receives 
when en route, or the varying circumstances that attend the production of farm but- 
,er, the argument is in favor of a creamery butter, made in conformity with the con- 
litions now laid down by our dairy authorities. 
A most significant item is the one that arises between drawing the product of a 
fairy in bulk—milk—and its subsequent product,—cheese—or only taking the cream, 
me-tenth of the original bulk! Not only is the cost of carriage reduced, but condi¬ 
tions can be controlled and governed. If milk comes to a factory reasonably sweet, 
t is received, it being impossible to discriminate between two lots of milk, which if 
tested would show a surprising variation in their butter values, and quite as likely in 
