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Dairymen, Write for Your Paper.
Lessons in Finance for the Creamery Patron.[A]
Any business to be permanent must make reasonable returns for the capital employed and give fair compensation for the labor bestowed upon it, otherwise it will be abandoned, or if continued at all it will be done under the protest of economic law. In addition to the ordinary circumstances attaching to business enterprise, the creamery business is essentially and peculiarly co-operative. It thrives with the thrift of all concerned—owner and patrons. It fails only with loss to all. The conditions of success, therefore, to the patrons are included in the conditions of success to the creamery, and vice versa.
The object of this paper is to suggest some of these conditions and some of the instances of violation of them.
It is hardly necessary to discuss the case in which peculiarity of soil or climate, the greater profitableness of some other kind of industry, or other reason, would so restrict the size and number of dairy herds as to make the locality a barren dairy region. Notwithstanding the splendid achievements of the dairy industry it is safe to say that it may not be profitable in any and every locality. Given the soil, the climate, the water, the people intelligent and disposed toward the exacting duties of this business, there are still many questions to be considered and many mistakes to be avoided.
It has been a pet idea in this country that competition is the corrective of all industrial evils. Competition without doubt holds an important place among the industrial forces, but may be carried so far as to defeat the very objects it is adapted to subserve, when intelligently encouraged. Carried to the extent of employing two persons or more to do the work of one, of absorbing capital without the full employment of it, it becomes destructive and expensive. We find, for instance, in many towns, a large number of commercial establishments doing business at an immense profit on single transactions, but the transactions are so few and so divided up among struggling competitors, that neither secures a profitable, nor even a respectable, business. With choice cuts of meat from twelve to eighteen cents a pound and butcher's stock at three and four cents, we often see butcher shops multiply, but the price of meat usually remains the same. Indeed, the very increase of middle man establishments beyond the employment of these to their full capacity, and the consequent full utilization of the capital and labor employed, is a sure loss to somebody, and if it does not all go to the producer it is almost always shared by him.
One of the greatest burdens which the creamery business has to carry to-day is the excessive number of its creameries beyond legitimate demands. The co-operative idea, so far as it enters into this business, implies the most profitable use possible of the resources employed in it both of patron and creamery owner, and a fair and equitable distribution of the profits. Said a large creamery owner to me recently, "I find the comparative value of my butter steadily decreasing from year to year. I have the same territory, the same butter-makers, the same patrons, substantially, but my butter is not up in quality and price as it used to be. I ascribe it to the excessive competition prevailing in it, i.e., it is one of its results. I have lost my influence over patrons in securing the best quality of cream. If I make any criticism of their modes or practices they say to me, 'Mr. ——, if you do not want my cream I will let the other creamery have it. Do just as you like about it; take it or leave it.'" But the loss of one or two cents a pound on the net proceeds of a season means five or ten per cent of its value, or of the entire season's results enough difference to make any community in a few years rich or poor, thrifty or unthrifty, according to the circumstances in the case.
Further: the idea of co-operation implies the doing of equal and exact justice to all included within the co-operative limits. This, an excessive and unprincipled competition greatly interferes with. It can properly be demanded by every fair and honest patron of a creamery that every other patron should be as fair and honest as himself. Indeed, this is an essential part of the implied contract. But in the case of excessive competition no restraints can be imposed and no penalties can be made to follow attempts to violate the principles of equity, except the possible inconvenience of changing from one creamery to another. The straight and honorable patron is powerless; the owner of the creamery is powerless; and the co-operative element is rendered a nullity.
Further: the co-operative element, in the relations of creamery and patrons, requires that the price of milk or cream shall vary with the market price of the finished product. Contracts for the future are mere speculation, as a rule. If the transaction is large and the turn of the market unfavorable to the creamery, ruin is liable to come to the business, and loss and disaster follow to all concerned. If the turn of the market should be the other way, among the numerous patrons there is sure to be more or less dissatisfaction and a more or less breaking up of the condition of friendly reciprocity which should exist between creamery and patron. Patrons may damage their own interest by exacting too much from the creamery as well as by accepting too little, and a greedy grasping after an unreasonable share of the profit on the part of the creamery owner is sure to bring retaliation, disturb cordiality of feeling, and bring loss to all concerned.
The remedy for most of these evils can only come from intelligent and wise action on the part of the creamery patrons of a given locality. They should study to prevent an unseemly and expensive competition. They, as the encouraging source, will surely in the end pay the expense of it. It has been said that no people in the world enjoy paying taxes like Americans, provided they are only indirect, sugar coated, and with some plausible pretense. It would seem, however, that even American dairymen could see that the maintenance of superfluous creameries, superfluous teams for hauling cream and milk, superfluous men for manufacturing and handling the product is an extra expense of which they will surely bear their full share; if not at once, they will do so before the outcome is reached.
Another thing the patrons of creameries may properly take note of is that the expense of manufacturing butter in all well regulated creameries is nearly the same, and the value of the product does not widely differ. When a creamery therefore claims large and peculiar advantages, and offers a price for milk or cream markedly above the ordinary price paid for it by other creameries, you may be sure there is something illegitimate about it. It may be done to drum up business, to beat a rival, or it may be a downright swindle, it surely will not be lasting, and the operator intends at some time to recoup for himself.
It is to be remembered that the dairy business is not one which can be taken up and laid down hastily without greater or less inconvenience, expense, and loss. Like most other branches of agriculture, it must be engaged in with the purpose of a steady, long, strong pull in order to be a success. It has the advantage of springing directly from the earth without fictitious help, props, or governmental protection, so-called. It taxes no other industry for its own benefit, and has expanded to its present magnificent proportions in spite of the burdens laid upon it from outside sources.
But it is written "And Satan came also." Nothing could more aptly describe the full influence of adulteration which has come upon this industry. It has come clothed in deceit and fraud, the very habiliments of the devil. It can be exterminated no more than sin itself. It must be fought by exposing its nature; by stamping upon it its own features. Wise legislation, I believe, will be in the direction of Government inspection and the sure and prompt punishment of fraud. The interest of the creamery patron is more deeply involved in this matter than that of any other class, just as in other branches of production the perils and losses by fraud, deterioration, and adulteration ultimately fall back upon the producer of the raw product. The apathy now existing among the producers of milk and cream is ominous of evil, and discouraging to those who are working in the interest of unadulterated goods. We have no doubt that the time will come when not only the adulteration of butter, but the adulteration of other food products as well, will only be carried on under the stamp and inspection of Government supervision.
The thoughts I have presented are intended to be suggestive rather than dogmatic, and I leave the subject with the hope that the intelligence of the average dairyman may be as active in tracing and comprehending the subtler principles of trade and commerce relating to the products of his labor as he is in comprehending the more immediate facts of his calling, such as breeding, seeding, and the handling of the raw products of his herd.
[A] Paper read before the Illinois Dairymen's Convention by C.C. Buell, of Rock Falls.
Fever.
Many kinds of horse fevers have been described by antiquated veterinary writers; but most exist only in the imagination of the writers, or have been manufactured out of the mistaken analysis of human fevers. All the real fevers of the horse may be comprised in two,—the idiopathic, pure or simple fever, constituting of itself an entire disease, and the symptomatic fever, occasioned by inflammatory action in some particular part of the body, and constituting rather the attendant of a disease than the disease itself.
Though idiopathic fever is comparatively infrequent in occurrence, it unquestionably meets the attention of most persons who have extensive stable management of horses, and its general tendency to degenerate into local inflammation and symptomatic fever, seems to arise far less from its own nature than from foul air, vicissitudes of temperature, and general bad management. If idiopathic fever is not easily reduced, the blood accumulates in the lungs, the viscera, or some other internal part of the body, and provokes inflammation; or, if a horse, while suffering under this fever, be kept in a foul or ill-ventilated stable, or be exposed to alternations of heat and cold, he speedily becomes locally inflamed from the action of the filth or exposure. The symptoms of idiopathic fever are shivering, loss of appetite, dejected appearance, quick pulse, hot mouth, and some degree of debility; generally, also, costiveness and scantiness of urine; sometimes, likewise, quickness of breathing, and such pains of the bowels as accompany colic. Idiopathic fever, if it does not pass into inflammation, never kills, but is generally always curable.
Cattle are subject to both idiopathic and symptomatic fever, very nearly in the same manner as the horse, and require, when suffering them, to be very similarly treated. The idiopathic fever of cattle has, in many instances, an intermitting character, which may easily be subdued by means of ordinary care; and, in other instances, has a steady and unintermitting character, and is exceedingly liable to resolve itself into pleurisy, enteritis, or some other inflammatory disease. The symptomatic fever of cattle is strictly parallel to the symptomatic fever of horses, and is determined by the particular seat and nature of the exciting inflammation. But besides these fevers, cattle are subject to two very destructive and quite distinct kinds of fever, both of an epizootic nature, the one of a virulent and the other of a chronic character,—the former inflammatory and the latter typhoid. Numerous modifications of these fevers, or particular phases of them, are more or less extensively known among our readers as black-leg, bloody murrain, etc. The fever which in many instances follows parturition, particularly in the cow, is familiarly known as calving fever, or milk fever; and the ordinary fevers of sheep, swine, dogs, upon the whole, follow the same general law as the ordinary fevers of the horse, and are classifiable into idiopathic and symptomatic.