Dairy Age from Beloit, Kansas • 1

i WW JT mr: I 'f A vt- liftift "Muscle, to Win, Must Be Lubricated With D. Coburn. VOLUME I. BELOFIV KANSAS, MARCH, 1901. NUMBER 12.

17114 1A 7wAMt AMII44 AU (Educating the Patron. Hre Doing for Rim. connected with the dairy interest must insist upon the feeding of brains with the corn meal and the sorghum and al-fallfa. The farmer's education is the only salvation for both creameryman and the farmer. Education on the farm as well as in all other walks of life must be the watchword.

It is gratifying to the Dairy Age to know that we are not the only institution on earth holding this opinion, or striving to drill it into the heads of the numbskulls who insist on hooting at this idea of education. It is a fact that the most successful creamery systems of these United States are annually spending thousands of dollars in the education of their patrons. At St. Paul, less than two weeks ago, the editor talked with a man who is employed by the Elgin Creamery Co. of Elgin, 111., at a salary of $2,000 per year whose business it is to hold farmers' meetings among the patrons of that company.

This dairy instructor goes to the station, meets the patron, answers his questions, tests his cows, figures the most economical and profitable feed out of the supply of forage and grains the farmer has on hand. He looks after the other thousands of things upon which dairymen in more advanced dairy sections are seeking information. Later we met the employer of this agent, the creamery owner himself. Asking if it paid to spend $2,000 per year for work of this kind he replied that it did. He spent annually several times more for papers, bulletins, etc.

The Forest Park Creamery Co. with headquarters at Kansas City, and which is almost a distinctively Kansas institution, has in its employ doing the same work as that mentioned above, Charles C. Lewis, who is the author of that most valuable paper printed elsewhere in this issue under the title, which is in a degree, misleading, "Does Account Keeping Pay in the Dairy." Besides the work of Mr. Lewis, this company is spending money otherwise to advance its patrons' interests. The Dairy Age is doing what it can for them and we will urge that every cent expended in spreading the diry gospel will in years return in the form of $5 gold pieces to the farmer and creameryman.

The Brady-Meriden Creamery, of Kansas City, a year ago this time, employed a young man of broad dairy information in this line of work with good results, but the instructor who was none other than J. A. Conover, found more enticing remuneration at the head of a Nebraska dairy farm, on which there are at present 300 cows and 3,000 acres of alfalfa. So all along the line of successful creamery operation there is a mighty effort to advance the mutual interests Of the farmer and the creamery by education. J'' The Continental Creamery Co, of To-peka, an institution operating 200 stations in the very heart of Kansas is not behind in this work.

The Dairy Age is going to each of its patrons monthly, and we are pleased to hear the satisfaction expressed by the heads of the institution at the investment so made. The Continental has its instructors, too, and if the ideas of its secretary, C. H. Pattison, are carried out as billed, it will by the time the paper reaches the public have in operation a splendid system of traveling libraries, which though small at this time, will be enlarged as needed. Mr.

Pattison has arranged with the great state of Kansas through Secretary Coburn for a large number of the twelfth bi-ennial report of the Kansas Board of Agriculture, which are to form the nucleus of this library. One of these books will be sent to each skimming station of the Continental system, and where the patronage is large more than one will be sent. This book will be in charge of the station operator, but will remain the property of the Continental Creamery Co. The operator will be requested to keep at all times a record of the whereabouts of the book, recording the names of who have used it, and seeing that each patron gets it in the turn of his application. The plan is a most commendable one.

When patrons have mastered the contents of the work they should have a good idea of the general work of feeding and caring for the cow. This report contains that most excellent work by PrOf. D. H. Otis, of the Kansas Experimental Station, entitled, "Dairying in Kansas; the Elements Necessary to Its Prosperity and Suggestions for the Best Management of the Cow and Her Products." This part of the work is Kansas dairying in a nutshell The reader will find its ideas so readably presented that his attention will be held as by a fascinating bit of fiction.

The other part of the report of greatest importance to the dairy farmer is that under the title of "Forage and Fodders," it being devoted principally to the cultivation of the wonderful alfalfa plant. In this the soy bean, Kaffir corn, sorghum and millet and all other Kansas feeds come in for an exhaustive treatise. The work is a fine one for the nucleus of a circulating library among dairy farmers. We would suggest that as the information therein contained becomes a part of each community, and there is the need of another work that Henry Wallace's book, 'The Skim Milk Calf," be next added to the library, and then Henry's "Feeds and Feeding." These books will cost money, but not more Continued on Page Four. car load lots, directly to the man who buys the butter and not to the commission man, as is so frequently the case in a small creamery, and the saving of local freight rates, then all has been accomplished that we can hope for from the creamery itself.

The next step in lowering the cost of production is thatone which only the milk producer himself can take. And that step is one which includes the manufacture of more milk from the acres devoted to its production, an increased product per cow which must come from a better cow and better, feeding. The farmer must be taught to produce milk more cheaply. The large creamery system produces its butter at a minimum cost. The farmer must produce his milk at a minimum cost or approximate it as nearly as possible.

In this matter of improving his condition, both financially and socially, the Kansas farmer is far behind the times. Annually, in most communities, the farmers' institutes are held and the editor has attended many meetings, at which were present less than fifty persons, counting men, women and children. The annual meetings of the State Dairy association are poorly attended by farmers for whom the meeting is especially designed to benefit. The bulletins from the Kansas Argicultural College are given a hurried reading and thrown aside. The reports of the Kansas Board of Agriculture instead of being the most frequently used of any book except the bible are given to the children as playthings.

The dairy papers which fall into their hands are possibly given a closer reading, for the paragraphs are short and articles more brief are finally cast aside because the teaching, coming as it does from some fellow who knows nothing about farming or dairying, is not worth considering. All of these things are offered as a help to the farmer. They are presented as beacon lights guiding him to a greater prosperity, but to this date are unheeded in a very great measure. However, this condition of affairs will not always prevail. This same experience has been the history of the farmer in other states which are at this time wealthy as the result of their dairy The Kansas creamerymen, our dairy school, our farm and dairy papers must keep everlastingly hammering away and they will be heard.

We must force this information upon the unheeding farmer. We must show the skeptical farmer what his neighbor is doing and insist that he can do as well. Every man in anyway The Jtime has come when the creamery interests of Kansas can make no further advances, except as the farmer advances in his methods of feeding and handling the cow. In a general way this is as true as gospel. Almost every community in the state in which a skimming station or creamery can by any means exist is provided with that institution.

The creamery manager knows that what he needs to make his business more profitable to himself and his patron, is not an increased number of skimming stations in his territory but more milk from the cows that are located within his territorial limits. To present the idea in the words of the present day slang, the further development of the creamery interests is "up to the farmer. Not a creamery or skimming station is doing business in Kansas that could not easily handle two times the product now received without increasing the investment or working force. A large part of our creameries are on one-half rations so far as their possibilities are concerned and the identical same thing is true of the man who milks the cows. Not a farmer is patronizing a creamery who could not easily keep two times as many cows on his acres and at the same time increase his yield per co three or four fold if he were to give the work the careful and intelligent attention which the profits from his dairy will justify.

To awaken the farmer to this realization is now the supreme effort of every wide-awake business man whose work is to deal with the butter or milk product. The little creamery, with its 2,500 or 3,000 pounds of milk every other day during the winter season is a weakliifg that hinders the growth of the dairy business so far as the farmer is concerned. Its cost of the manufactured product per pound is so great that the farmer's returns must be small with what they might be if the milk receipts vwere increased three or four times. Viewing the matter from this standpoint, the Dairy Age is very much in sympathy with the idea of creamery consolidation which is so popular among creamerymen these days. If by the consolidation of these business interests the expense of manufacture can be decreased, then let us have consolidation.

The present day consolidation of creameries is a good thing, and when our largest companies have become systematized and in perfect order, then the problem of economical manufac ture, economical purchasing of supplies as will be the case, in large lots and the economical sale of the product as is brought about By shipment in.