198 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
more than that made in the individual farm-dairy to pay the 
entire cost of making. 
Another important result of the system has been a constant 
improvement in dairy management, and the better knowledge 
of all that pertains to milk and its products, than would nat¬ 
urally obtain under the old system. It has established a 
special profession or calling, upon which men enter with a 
view of making it a sole business. They, therefore, seek to 
perfect themselves in it, and as skill and success are sure to be 
properly rewarded in this department of labor, great emulation 
exists among manufacturers to excel in their art. 
During the first ten years of the factory system it received 
much opposition, especially from those who had only a super¬ 
ficial knowledge of its operations. So strong was this opposi¬ 
tion among the old dairymen, that it was pretty generally be¬ 
lieved that the system could not long endure, and it was confi¬ 
dently predicted that the factories would be abandoned, and 
those engaged in them would return to the old plan of indi¬ 
vidual or farm-dairying. 
But the factories, meanwhile, were steadily gaining ground; 
and dairymen entering upon the new system found in it so 
much relief, as well as profit, that they could not be induced 
to abandon it; and so to-day associated-dairying in America 
has come to be regarded as a fixed institution. 
In the original plan of Mr. Williams it was not contempla¬ 
ted to apply the system to butter manufacture. But the suc¬ 
cess of the cheese-factories suggested to the butter dairymen of 
Orange county, New York, such a modification of the system 
as would adapt it to their branch of business. 
Orange county lies about fifty miles north of New York 
city, and has long been devoted to producing milk for city 
consumption. It is a rolling mountainous region, abounding 
in sweet and nutritious pasturage, with never-failing springs 
and streams of pure water. The whole farming population of 
this county has for eighty years, or more, devoted its chief at¬ 
tention to butter-making and the production of fresh milk for 
