Page 5 - DairyOnThePrairie

Dairy on the Prairie 3

ers created "something of a revolution" in the cream- before of 97,770 pounds. Indeed, there were many plants serving a local neighborhood of farmers. The
ery system. Farmers could now ship their own prod- creameries by 1906 that were producing between cooperative creamery movement that was on the rise
uct to markets in other parts of the state, as well as to 250,000 and 500,000 pounds of butter a year. Increas- after the depression of the 1890s was also concentrat-
cities outside the state resulting in the formation of ingly, Iowa butter was being sold in Chicago and east- ed in this region. According to historian Vernon
large "centralizing" plants, By 1905, centralizing ern markets, such as New York. As the creamery Pinkham, in areas where farmers relied more heavily
plants were producing more than one-fifth of the system became prevalent throughout the state, cheese- on the profitability of their dairying enterprise, they
state's creamery butter. (The Diamond Creamery in making declined, with the number of cheese factories were more likely to band together in cooperatives to
Monticello an example of a centralizing plant in Jones dwindling from over 100 in the late 1880s to just a ensure they received the best price for their milk. To-
County in the early twentieth century.) Whereas in handful by 1910.5 day, there are just five remnants of the old coopera-
1900, most of the state's creameries were small facto- tive creamery system, all but one of which are found
ries processing the milk of a few hundred cows—in The large centralizing plant became more common in Northeast Iowa: they are located in Staceyville,
some cases less than two—in 1906, there were few in areas where dairying was practiced only margin- Waverly, Lake Mills, Dyersville and Independence.
creameries in the state producing less than 150,000 ally by farmers, as it gathered cream from a territory None of these manufacture butter any longer, operat-
pounds of butter a year. This was a marked increase of many miles. In areas where more creameries clus- ing today as fluid milk bottling facilities.6
over an average output per creamery only three years tered, in the northeast part of the state at the turn-of-
the-last century, many of these tended to be smaller The development of the modern Iowa dairy indus-

BUTTER QUALITY AND SANITATION

In sections where large centralizing plants predominated, an unintended consequence of the hand-separator system when it was first adopted was the
decline in butter quality that resulted. With so many different farmers separating their own milk and sending it to a single plant, it was easier for the
supply to become adulterated with poor quality cream. Not all farmers were diligent about cleaning and scalding the separator between uses, or storing
cream in clean vessels and at the proper temperature. Meanwhile, the creameries themselves were competing so fiercely for the cream supply that poor
quality was often overlooked. Many plants were also lax in their testing of butterfat, not wanting to lose any patrons to their competitors. This became
such a problem, in fact, that at the 1906 meeting of the Iowa State Dairy Association, the association's president declared improving the state's butter
quality to be the "greatest and most important question for us to consider today." Iowa State's professor of dairying declared that the butter being
produced was worse than a decade before and that furthermore, "the quality of cream furnished to many of our creameries today is a disgrace to any
civilized people."

Both Dairy Commissioner Wright and the Iowa State Dairy Association called for government regulation to address the problem and to protect the
smaller creameries being forced out of business. Wright contended that the number of creameries and butter stations had fallen from 994 in 1900 to 552
in 1908, often due to unfair pricing practices used by the large centralizing plants, which paid patrons more than the fair market value for their cream and
more than the smaller plants could afford to pay. In response to lobbying by Wright and the Dairy Association, an anti-discrimination law was enacted
in 1909 to prohibit unfair pricing (of eggs, poultry, and grain as well as milk and cream) being used to force smaller competitors out of business. Both
public pressure and lobbying from the dairy industry attributed to the pure food law of 1906, as well as the amending of the state's dairy laws. Enforce-
ment of the stricter rules was given to the Dairy Commissioner, now the State Dairy Commissioner. His authority extended to regulating "the manufac-
ture, sale and transportation of dairy products within the state, including the right to inspect all creameries, cars, wagons, and containers."7 (Henry D.
Sherman of Jones County served as the first Dairy Commissioner of Iowa from 1886 to 1890.)