Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1883-04-13

The splitting Of few cans Of milk and the
temporary stoppage Of the supply from the
line of the Erie Railroad is not the beginning
nor the end of the Orange County milk war.
The causes which goaded the farmers to
desperation lie too deep to be rooted out by a
schedule of prices set by a committee for a
month or year. Such agreements, entered
into by large number of people, are never
maintained Supply and demand will assert
their power in spite of all the resolutions Of
farmers committees or combinations between
creamery men and milk dealers. few facts
may give an idea of what has made milk
farming a losing business.
The average Orange County farmer has a
natural affinity for mortgage. II he owns
ten COWS, he must mortgage his place and buy
twenty more. He finds it impossible to care
for SO many cattle and carry on any other
branch of farm labor. Not one farmer in
five raises his own grain. Almost all the feed
used in Orange County is brought there from
outside its limits. They do not even raise
their own calves, but buy from the West and
add it to the mortgage. Many of them actu-
ally buy their butter, and but very few raise
any. pork, either to eat or SELL The whole
aim of their existence has been to produce
milk. While the consumer was paying fifty
cents for butter, sixteen to eighteen cents for
pork, and twenty-five cents for beef, these
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to sell, but were flooding the market with
milk, for which they received cent and a
half to two and half cents per quart. This
is how the farmer has cheated himself
Now very naturally follows how, when he
had thrown away half his chances, a few
shrewd men, not too philanthropical, coolly
pocketed the other half. They established
creameries in the milk country-skmmerie
would be q much more expressive name
The farmer was invited to bring in his milk
and receive the New York price for it, less the
freight. This struck him as good thing
no wear and tear of cans on the cars, nor risk
of losing them. The creamery man became
his customer But this customer was also a
member of the Milk Exchange in New York,
which sets the price next month for the milk
bought during this. Now when the creamery
man has collected all the milk from hundred
farms, it is poured into small cans, and placed
in shallow watts filed with water and ice.
Here the cream rises and is carefully skinned
off until the full milk delivered by the farmer
has been reduced to a point just escaping the
limit fixed by law. Part of the cream thus
obtained is sold to New York hotels at from
twenty to thirty cents per quart, and part is
made into the high priced creamery butter"
The skinned milk, in which, often with the
aid Of little salt, the lactometer hobs serene
ly at exactly the official figure, is then put in
to the usual forty-quart can and shipped to
the city, and upon what this impoverished
stuff will bring in the market is based the
New York price" to the farmer for the milk
delivered during the month past. In other
words, the creamery man pays the farmer for
his full milk what he himself gets for the
skinned article, and has the cream, butter
and cheese, for which he pays not one penny,
for his profit. The expense Of running a
creamery is trifling, one.horse engine and
two or three men doing all the work. 1t is
not very strange, then, that the creamery
men have grown fat, while the farmer is un-
able to pay the interest on his debts. The
writer knows of cases-and they are typical
where farmers have spent during the past sea-
son for food alone as much, or within humid
red dollars of as much, as they received for
milk, being out their help, interest on capital
invested, interest on their indebtedness, and
their time.
Now the farmers may get angry when they
find themselves being driven to the wall, and
may denounce the creameries as the source
of all their trouble, and call the proprietors
swindlers and thieves, but it is the milk
farmer who has made the creamery O posi-
bility. The creamery is simply doing the
work that should be done upon the farms.
Why do not few farmers try making butter
as well as selling milk, feeding few porkers
on the skinned milk, raising their own oats,
rye and corn for feed, bringing up few
good calves, and not try to turn everything
into milk that is not wanted
As matters stand now in the milk producing
counties about New York, the farmers are like
sheep running in deep rut making it an ca
sy matter for the wolves to fall upon and de-
YOUR em.-HarperS' Weekly