CO-OPERATIVE CHEESE-MAKING.

In all human efforts, grand results have been attained chiefly by concert of action.

In our own time, everything is done by co-operation. Railways across continents, canals uniting oceans and seas, bridges almost of fabulous proportions, enterprises in engineering and commerce, never before known, evince the extent to which modern genius is availing itself of concert of effort in testing human capacity.

There is a visible tendency in all branches of business toward co-operation and centralization.

In looking down upon a large city, the unity visible even in the diversity of human affairs manifests itself in a manner truly wonderful. The air is literally filled with a vast net-work of wire, crossing and re-crossing in every conceivable direction, and over these, backward and forward, the thoughts of men are made to vibrate with the speed of lightning, in the elaboration and consummation of thousands of business schemes, and the air, as well as the buildings and streets, is full of human activity and enterprise. The lawyer, sitting comfortably at his desk in his office, talks with his banker, physician, grocer, a hundred clients, and his family, all seated like him himself at home, or at their various places of business. Thus is the telephone made the instrument of human co-operation and concert of action.

It is now less than thirty years since dairymen stumbled into the practice of co-operation in the business of making-cheese. Previous to that time cheese-making in this country was, to say the least, a crude affair. Every farmer ran his own factory, according to his own peculiar notion, and disposed of his products as he could "light on" chaps. In that day, cheese-making was guess work and hap-hazard. To-day it is a science. Then there were as many rules and methods as there were men. To-day the laws which nature has enacted, to govern the process of converting milk into cheese, are codified, and cheese-making has become a profession. In that day the accumulated results of the cheese industry of a neighborhood or township was a sight to behold—all manner of circular blocks, of concentrated error, large and small, thick and thin, when heaped together presented a spectacle that would now bring a smile upon the countenance of the most sober and dignified cheese-maker in the State.

The condition of the market at that time was quite as crude and irregular as the system, or rather the want of system, in manufacturing. There was no cable, no regular reports from the great business centers of the land, no regularly organized boards of trade, railroads not as numerous, less daily papers were in circulation, and many other circumstances which left the seller comparatively at the mercy of the buyer, and the purchase and sale of a dairy was conducted upon principles similar to those usually practiced in a horse trade.

The great changes which since that day have taken place in the dairying world are due chiefly to a division of labor, the introduction of system and co-operation. Our machinery, we are sorry to say, is not yet quite perfect in all its parts, and does not move with the precision and harmony of the orchestra, to which we have already alluded. Yet, although still in its infancy, it has already produced and does annually produce results grand indeed.

If we take a glance at the various industries at which men are to-day engaged, intellectual, commercial, and mechanical, the painstaking exactitude everywhere practiced will be found to be a growing subject of wonder and admiration. The secret of this lies in the fact that perfection in any department of business not only enlarges that business but also enriches those engaged in it. For example: there are perhaps ten times as many watches manufactured in the world to-day as at any other period in its history. It is a profitable business, or men would not engage in it, and the superhuman effort that is being continually put forth to increase the value, by making as perfect an article as human power can produce, establishes conclusively the assertion that there is always a profit in doing well. I am glad to observe that in the cheese industry of the United States and Canada, the light of this truth has to some extent aroused the slumbering dairymen. To quote from the Utica Herald of Sept. 11, 1883: "It is estimated that about 700,000 men are employed in this business, in one capacity or another, and that about 15,000,000 cows are used to furnish the one product of milk. The returns from this product are over $800,000,000. The total amount of capital invested in dairying in the United States is estimated to reach the enormous sum of $2,000,000,000." In consulting these figures we hope there is no person so dense of understanding as to entertain for a moment the idea that had the old system of every man his own cheese-maker prevailed that anything approaching this grand result would ever have been attained. Never. The concert or effort attained in the factory system is the key note to this grand, soul-inspiring chorus.

But an experience of twenty-five years in the dairy industry leads me to the conclusion that in the music of our business there is yet much discord. The dairymen and factorymen fail to understand the spirit of the piece we are attempting to perform, and fail to catch the idea that individual profit and prosperity depend upon the success of the business as a whole. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and so long as there remains a slovenly dairyman in the business just so long our system will be incomplete and the working of co-operation remain imperfect. Perfect concert of effort, unbroken unity of hand with hand, in all the various details of the business, reaching down to the most unimportant items in the production of milk and the making of cheese, will produce in the long run the most profitable and permanent results to the individual as well as to the community.

"But," say some, "there is too much of the millennium, too much of theory, too much of the unattainable, in all this." To such I answer that there is much of the millennium, much of theory, and much of the unattainable in the Sermon on the Mount, and yet our Divine Master preached it, nevertheless.

It may perhaps be considered chimerical and theorizing to talk of a time when there will be no such persons among dairymen as what are known to the cheese-maker as a skimmer or stripper, but we hope such a time will come, nevertheless.

To what purpose do A., B., and C., and a score of other industrious, honest, painstaking fellows, exert themselves to collect a model dairy, sparing neither time nor expense in providing themselves with perfect sets of improved appurtenances for those dairies, from rich, well-watered pastures down to good, substantial three-legged milking stools, and labor incessantly from sunrise until sundown, that their barns may be in perfect order and everything connected with the business neat and clean, in order that their material may come into the hands of the manufacturer in a perfect condition—if heedless, lazy, shiftless, dishonest, ignorant, good-for-nothing D. keeps about him a herd of sick, disconsolated racks-of-bones, to wander over his arid and desolate fields in search of food and drink in summer, or with backs humped up, hover together for shelter under the lea of a wheat-straw stack, their only food in winter, and using a kit of dairying tools, the very best article of which is an old, water-soaked, dirty wooden pail, drawing his whey from the factory in the old, rusty, time-embattled milk cans, in which it is allowed to stand until the next milking, and which, after an imperfect washing, and refilled and returned to the factory, freighted with a compound sufficiently poisoned to nullify and undo the best efforts of a hundred A., B., and C's. It may be theorizing and visionary to talk of a time when the spirit of co-operation shall have driven such fellows out of the dairying business, to betake themselves with a pick-ax and spade to the ditch, but that such a time may come ought to be the earnest prayer of every thorough-going friend of co-operation in the land.

It may seem like castle building and an unprofitable waste of time to indulge in theories and construct plans by which the rivalry among factorymen may be kept within a limit sufficiently circumscribed to prevent the fear of loss of patronage from interfering with, and lowering the standard of, our cheese. It is too often the case, nowadays, that factorymen are deterred from a full and complete discharge of their duty to themselves, their patrons, and the world in general, by a fear, by no means groundless, that a bold and upright course with regard to the material brought to them will result in a damaging, if not entire loss, of their occupation.

The unwise extent to which men have gone in the erection of cheese factories, has increased competition to an extent decidedly prejudicial to the interest of the cheese-consuming world. A., having invested his entire capital in the construction and equipment of a factory, will be quite likely, when B., C., and D. erect factories in his immediate neighborhood, to hold his peace when sundry varieties of swill milk are offered at his door, instead of speaking out an equivocal protest against the insult thus offered to his professional pride and sense of decency.

To the dairyman naturally given to slovenly and careless habits, the restraint to which he might otherwise be subjected is practically removed when nearly equi-distant from his place of abode there are three or four factories, instead of one, and he knows that if rejected at one place, he can without inconvenience go to another, and thus it transpires that at five factories in every ten there will be found a conspicuous absence of thorough and inexorable discriminations which ought always to prevail in the receipt of milk for factory purposes.

For this abuse there is, in our estimation, a remedy however theoretical and visionary it may appear, and that is concert of action and co-operation among factorymen. Men in all branches of business, nowadays, associate with each other, and form themselves into bodies for the purpose of closer union and mutual protection, and when this is done for the general good, as well as individual advancement, the purpose is laudable and universally successful.

We know of no business in which the necessity of combination is so great as that of cheese-making, and, what, let me ask, could be more desirable and praiseworthy than an association of cheese-makers, for the purpose of sending the swill milk of the country to the hogs, where it belongs, instead of making it up, as at present, for human consumption.

We have an idea that such an association might be successfully formed, and that, when once in effectual operation, it might ask the legislative body of its country to enact a law, entitled "An Act for the suppression of swill milk, and for the general good of mankind," in which it should be provided, among other things, that in every case where a dairyman has left a factory on account of having had his milk rejected for cause traceable to his negligence, that in all such cases, the factory or factory company knowingly receiving the milk of such rejected party, shall be liable to some appropriate penalty.

The extreme sensitiveness of milk in the absorption of taint from the atmosphere, or any substance with which it comes in contact, ought to be thoroughly understood by all persons engaged in handling it, but, we believe, that but few comparatively are alive to the true facts of the case. I herewith present several paragraphs clipped from journals of recent date:

"There are seventy-five cases of typhoid fever in the town of Port Jarvis. Dr. McDonald attributes the spread of the disease to the use of milk from the farm of Mrs. Thomas Cuddebach, in whose family there have been several typhoid cases, holding that the milk conveyed the disease germs. Nearly all of the parties now sick had used milk from the farm."

"A dairyman from Dundee has been apprehended and fined for allowing his wife and daughter to milk cows and assist in the sale of milk, after they had been engaged in nursing a child suffering from scarlet fever. No less than nineteen cases of fever, four of which resulted fatally, were traced to this act of carelessness."

With these facts in view, how can it be expected that any amount of diligence on the part of a cheese-maker can atone for the unpardonable sin committed, day after day, by the heedless and unobserving patrons, of leaving a can of freshly drawn milk standing all night in an unwholesome barn or yard, until it has absorbed a whole family of pestilential odors, and then to carry it to the factory to corrupt and poison everything with which it comes in contact.

Some may suppose it a mere theory to speak of a condition of things in which abuses of this character can not be found, but during an experience of five years as cheese instructor, in the Province of Ontario, during which I superintended the making of cheese in about 400 different factories, and during the last year inspected the milk from about 65,000 cows, the property of about 7,000 dairymen, I occasionally made up vats in which there was no discoverable taint and which, I was pretty certain, came from the farms of well drilled, well posted dairymen, and, from a circumstance of this character, I am led to the conclusion that what has been done once can be done again, and I make such facts a text upon which I found my plea for more thorough co-operation and diligent painstaking in the work of producing milk for factory purposes.

There may be times when peculiar atmospheric conditions will exert unfavorable influences, and seasons when drought and wet weather will produce changes, over which human efforts have no control, and for these sufficient allowance must be made. We quarrel with the stupidity, shiftlessness, and ignorance of men, and not with the providence of God.

In this day and age of the world there is no excuse for ignorance upon the points to which we have alluded. Wisdom uttereth her voice in the streets, and he who will not hear her ought to be drummed out of the camp of dairymen. As a rule, a common carpenter puts more thought into his business in a month than many dairymen do in a year. Indeed, it would be difficult to point out a single branch of human industry, of one-half the magnitude which the manufacture and sale of cheese has reached, carried on in a manner so slipshod and slovenly as dairying.

The banker, the columns of whose ledger fail by one cent of balancing, spares neither time nor money in searching out and correcting the error; the merchant brings to bear upon his business a care and insight so unceasing and laborious that his locks are soon sprinkled with premature silver; the machinist works to plans from which the variation of a thousandth part of an inch can not be allowed to pass uncorrected; but the dairyman too often stumbles along through his work without thought, or employs the little intellect he has in putting in and harvesting his crops, leaving the dairy in the meantime to take care of itself. There are too many men engaged in dairying who can see nothing in the business beyond the factory dividend; men to whom filling the milk pail and the can are the Alpha and Omega of life. To such men such a thing as an ambition that their county, town, or neighborhood shall attain and hold a reputation for being the banner cheese district of the State or nation, is as thoroughly unknown as the configuration of the bottom of the Dead sea.

In saying what we have about the patrons of cheese factories, and the closer and more thorough co-operation among them, we have been actuated by no feelings of unkindness or ill will, nor have we arraigned them upon trivial or imaginary charges. The indictments we have found against them are all true bills, against which too many of them will be unable to sustain the plea of not guilty. We have been constrained to our present course by an overmastering sense of the importance of greater care, deeper thought, and closer union in pushing forward one of the greatest industries of the day. I am confident that before another step can be taken in advance it must be preluded by a correction of the errors which we have feebly attempted to portray, all of which lie outside and prior to the factory. As a body, cheese-makers can do little better than they are now doing, until there is some improvement in the material upon which they are called upon to exercise their skill, and the practice of crimination and recrimination, the factorymen tossing the blame upon the dairymen and the dairymen upon the factorymen, which is made use of to conceal the real source of our mistakes, will continue to shield him from the eyes of a discriminating public until the care and diligence of dairymen strip him of this shelter and drive him forward on the march to improvement.

REMEMBER that $2.00 pays for The Prairie Farmer from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of The Prairie Farmer County Map of the United States, free! This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country.

Impaction of the Paunch.

Impaction of the paunch (the first stomach or rumen) in cattle, sometimes also called grainsick or mawbound, differs from bloating or hoove, mainly thereby that the distention is more solid than gaseous, it being either with food alone, or with food and gas. Symptomatically it differs also from hoove by the absence of eructation, and by the hardness of the flanks and the smaller volume of the swelling. It arises from gorging with almost any kind of food, even with grain or with chaff, at a sudden change of diet; but it is particularly liable to arise from a surfeit of turnips, fresh grass, or any other succulent food at the commencement of the season. The instrument called a probang ought to be introduced, either to decide whether the case be one of hoove or one of mawbound, or to ascertain the degree in which the latter disease exists. If the probang bring on a sudden rush of gas, the disease is wholly or chiefly hoove; and if it encounter a solid resistance, the disease mawbound, and exists in a degree of aggravation proportioned to the nearness of the point at which the resistance is felt.

In mild cases of impaction of the paunch, when the animal does not seem to suffer much pain, and is not materially fevered, but merely ceases rumination or chewing of the cud, refuses to eat, and lies long and indolently in one posture, a dose of oil, or a little forced walking, are frequently sufficient to effect a cure. In cases which, though on the whole mild, are accompanied with a kind of inertia, or with an insuperable reluctance to rise or to move about, stimulants, such as ether diluted with alcohol and water, may be required to rouse the paunch into renewed action; but whenever such remedies are necessary, they must be given in cautious doses, and always accompanied with some gentle purgatives. In very bad cases, when the animal seems sinking through inertness into death, or in which moans, swells at the sides, becomes almost as a board in the flanks, appears to suffer great and increasing pain, and seems eventually to be overwhelmed with anguish and to be passing into unconsciousness, it must be promptly decided whether we have sufficient time and encouragement to try the effect of stimulants, purgatives, the stomach pump, and other comparatively gentle measures; and if not, we should, without much delay, cut through the left flank into the paunch, and with the hands withdraw the contents. The cutting operation itself is attended or followed with little danger; but in the extracting of the food, no matter how carefully performed, some small portion is liable to drop into the abdominal cavity; and this, in consequence of its indigested condition, resists absorption or expulsion, undergoes an irritating decomposition, and may very probably originate some serious inflammatory disorder. Any animal which has suffered a very bad case of impaction of the paunch, ought, immediately after complete restoration to health, to be sent to the shambles; for, independently of the lurking danger consequent on the artificial extraction of the food, or even upon the relaxation which follows the administration of a stimulant, the paunch is so much overstretched and injured by the mechanical effects of the distension as to be temporarily incapacitated for the proper discharge of its functions.

Queries Answered.

Probably Ringbone.—W. B. S., Sciola, Iowa. In the absence of any information to the contrary, the lameness may be regarded as due to the development of ringbone. There is no certain cure for this disease. All that may be expected from treatment is to retard or stay its progress or development; but in all cases more or less stiffness or lameness will remain, depending upon the extent of its development. Then, subsequent hard work, or any cause of renewed irritation, will be apt to further aggravate the case, and cause additional enlargement and increasing lameness. The usual course of treatment in such cases consists in blistering or firing, or both combined, with subsequent long rest or a season's liberty on pasture.

Uneasiness is a species of sagacity; a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.

Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper.

Lessons of 1883.

BY O. B. GALUSHA.

Progress in all arts and sciences is the one grand aim of all associations and of all agricultural and horticultural societies and journals; and to study the results of each year's experiences and observations, comparing them with those of previous years, and also with the ideal of perfection which each laborer in these several departments of industry has pictured in his own mind, is the best preparation for achieving desired results in the future.

In the present paper we will take a brief retrospect of the fruit crops of 1883, and inquire into the causes of successes and failures.