ANNUAL EEPORT—AGRICULTURE. 
39 
the milk of 1,000 cows. Many of the factories are owned and 
managed by one or a few individuals ; others are managed by 
joint-stock companies ; and still others are conducted on the 
mutual benefit or co-operative system—several farmers of a 
neighborhood sharing in the expense of establishing and con¬ 
ducting the factory. 
This system of collecting the milk of a neighborhood and 
making up the cheese under the supervision and by the labor 
of comparatively few persons is not only vastly more econom¬ 
ical than the individual method, but a much better quality is 
also the result. For, in such cases, great pains are taken to 
procure the most skillful and every way competent superin¬ 
tendents, as well as the best available operatives—a disposition 
constantl}/- strengthened by the competition and emulation 
that naturally springs up between the various manufacturing 
establishments of the same county, district and state, and the 
ever-increasing importance to each of them of making its par¬ 
ticular brand popular in the markets. 
In view of the many advantages attaching to the factory 
system, it is rather surprising that it should not have been in¬ 
troduced long ago. It is only very recently that it has been 
introduced in Wisconsin; and yet there are already in opera¬ 
tion scarcely less than 50 factories; many of them consuming 
the milk of 200 to 400, and at least one, (the Rosendale factory,) 
of 600 cows. Moreover, the number of such factories is con¬ 
stantly increasing, though not faster, either here or elsewhere 
in the country, it is believed by those best acquainted with the 
constantly growing demand for cheese of a good quality, than 
is consistent with the future profits of the business. 
Hitherto, for some reason, but little attention has been giv¬ 
en by these cheese-making companies to the manufacture of 
butter—an article certainly no less susceptible of successful 
and profitable manufacture under the co-operative or general 
factory system than cheese, and one the necessity for improve¬ 
ment in the quality of which is universally felt. 
On this general subject of dairy products, and on the sever¬ 
al branches of it, so much has been written and published of 
