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Dairy on the Prairie 17

OTHER CHANGES longer just a labor-intensive enterprise, requiring only duction, and book farming. Dairying had arisen to
the diligent farmer willing to consistently milk twice safeguard against crop failures, blights, and market
Several other changes affected the early dairy in- daily for a portion of the year and take his milk to the fluctuations in an effort for farmers to turn a profit.
dustry. The Iowa Butter Exchange opened in 1884. creamery. By the turn of the century, to be successful, As dairying became commercialized "eventually it
Butter buyers from New York, San Francisco, Boston, the dairyman needed to purchase expensive machin- became organized according to the same principles
and Chicago to name a few, gathered to purchase large ery and maintain it; build silos and improve the san- that governed crop and livestock markets, thus mak-
quantities of manufactured dairy products at fluctu- itation levels of his barn; and expand and improve ing it vulnerable to the very forces it had been de-
ating prices. Previously, these trades either occurred the quality of his herd. The industry was subject to signed to avoid.61
on an individual basis, or through other established governmental regulations and focused on efficiency,
trade exchanges, such as in Chicago or Elgin, Illinois. sanitation standards, breeding for higher milk pro-
As Eastern butter buyers became more influential over
the Iowa dairy market, local economies began to re- Top: milking procedure during the early 1900s. Library
flect wider nationwide supply-and-demand trends, ofCongress, Prints and Photographs Collection, FSA/OWI
making the dairy industry susceptible to the very fi- Collection. No photographer, 1940. LC-USF 34-07516-ZD.
nancial fluctuations the first cheese and butter facto-
ry patrons had hoped to avoid.58 Bottom: modern milking procedure. Courtesy ofDepart-
ment ofAnimal Science, Iowa State University.
Several inventions had ramifications that are still
felt in the industry today. Automatic vacuum milk- 1889 advertisementfor dairying supplies in Cedar Rap-
ing machines were first patented in America in 1859, ids Gazette.62
but were not perfected or accepted by dairymen for
many decades until the arrival of the Mehring milk
machine around 1890; even then, many farmers con-
tinued to hand-milk.59 Commercial pasteurization ma-
chines were introduced in 1895, and became
commonplace after 1910.60

State and national dairy regulations, particu-
larly regarding sanitary standards, played a driv-
ing role in how farms operated. The passage of
the Meat Inspection Act in 1890 and its 1906
amendment authorized inspectors from the
United States Department of Agriculture to en-
force sanitation standards within the dairy in-
dustry, even on the individual farm level. Farms
had to maintain certain standards of cleanli-
ness, which often meant improving their barns
to include concrete floors that could be easily
washed-down.

Butter and cheese production expanded
and changed the way the dairy business was
conducted. By the 1890s, dairying was no