Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1878-07-24
The Butter Future.

ia. Is. b. (Nlrs. Boyce, OF Fayston, we
suppose) writes to the Boston CUitivdtor to
protest against the statement--the very false
and very absurd statement-which recently
appeared in its columns, to the effect that
Vermont butter is not as good as it used to
be- The fact is well-known, and admitted
by all skilled purchasers, that the percent
age of first-class butter shipped from Yer
mont has considerably increased within the
last few years. and is still increasing. Yet
the price paid for it has not been as low for
many years as now The reasons for this
unpleasant fact are several The first and
principal one is that in this harvest season
of the millionaire interest, when systematic
depression of all property has been so sue
cessfully worked up by the concurrence with
natural causes of skillfully devised legisla-
ton for d" the greatest good of the greatest
number of dollars-at this season when
the rich mans dollar will buy more of the
products of the poor mans labor than before
for generation--all the productions of land
and labor are reduced in price below their
real value and absolute cost, and butter goes
down with the rest. Another reason is the
immense substitution in the cities and large
towns of oleomargarine for the lower grades
of butter This has made low-grade butter
almost worthless, and has led also to very
earnest efforts to palm off second-cass butter
for extra by re-working it into prints and
rolls-a practice which has probably led
ignorant parties into the idea that our really
choice butter has deteriorated.
A third reason (and this chiefly affects
the market of our "gilt-edge dairies) is
the flood Of " creamery butter" brought in
from the West. This creamery butter is
made by skillful hands on the cooperative
plan, and has the merits of freshness, good
color and flavor, combined with uniformity.
This uniformity is a great point with the
middlemen, being regarded by them as far
more desirable than even much higher oc-
casional quality in the products of farm
diaries, with variation in the same or differ
ent packages. 1t is becoming the case with
butter, as it has now for some time been the
case with cheese, as the result of the cheese
factory method, that uniformity goes be-
fore quality in regulating price. Very few
cheese-factories make really first-rate cheese,
but they aim to make uniform product as
good as they can with the material they get
and their facilities for manufacturing and
curing. This uniformity is very important
in commercial transactions-as important
in dairy goods as in cloths or Gotten goods,
and as difficult to secure under home manu-
facture as compared with factory work.
And it is this, mainly, which is giving
creamery butter preference over even our
best homemade products.
What is the remedy Simply that Yer
mont cream should be made up into cream
cry butter. "Only this and nothing more -
"Creamery is after all more brand than
a special product, and a brand that really
means Uniform butter" A simple dairy
may make creamery butter if it chooses and
knows how but as a rule cooperation is
necessary for making uniform goods in suf.
| W anu Sdt
isfactory market. Now, if we can get two
or three cents pound more for this uniform
butter, is it not better for two, three, five, OF
ten dairy farms in one neighborhood to have
their cream made up by single skilled
hand and marketed under a single brand
There are difficulties about this, and OBJ
iections will be made. But we can do it as
well as the Western folks, and we must dc
it if Vermont is to maintain her position as
butter-making state. As soon as the
creamery system is generally established the
creamery butter will fall into grades like
other goods, and then it will not be cream
cry against all other butter, as now, but
creamery against creamery, and the choice
creameries will then stand where our gilt
edged diaries have stood, at the head of the
market. Uniformity and graded quality vii
have taken place in dairy products as in al
other staple manufactures, to the advantage
of both buyer and seller. "To this com
plexion must we come at last"