The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-18
titles of Eastern creamery butter packed

solid in ash or spruce tubs, of about sixty
pounds weight, were received here from
Elgin, ILL.,, and other points. And
although the freight was $500 per car of
twelve tons, it sold at profit, and dairy
men soon found that grocers and their Gus
toners bought it at an advance of to 10
cents pound over the best California dairy
butter. The result of these shipments was
large demand for creamery butter. Our
most enterprising dairymen soon discov-
cred that in order to sell the products of
their diaries they must make creamery
butter equal or better than the Eastern
| product.
"Few if any creameries were in opera
ton IN this State previous to 1892, but dur
ing '92 and '93 several were erected, the
larger number being in Humboldt County,
and that county taking the lead in the
number of creameries erected has main
tanned it, and there is twice or three times
| as much creamery butter manufactured in
Humboldt County at the present time
as in any other county in the State. Be-
fore the invention of the cream separator,
which, by the by, was invented in Russia
by Russian, and patented by him in the
United States, as well as many other coun-
tries, the dairymen OF the East set their
milk in pans at home, and many of them
sold their cream to the creamery man, who
called around at the farm house every
morning, and paid them cash, he hauling
1t by teams to one common center, where
the cream was churned and manufactured
into butter. The butter being uniform in
quality, light sailed, and furnished to the
consumers fresh every day, through the
middleman, or the grocer, the creamery
company were enabled to obtain better
prices by 4 or 5 cents a pound than
the average dairyman, who churned his
butter on the farm. This difference in
price also enabled the creamery company
to make a fair profit.
/ ''Then came the invention of the cream
pa1ator which is a small power mach inc,
revolving 1000 revolutions minute into
which the new milk is poured and from
one spout is elected sweet cream and from
another skim milk, or rather sweet milk
from which the cream has been extracted
These separators are SO expensive and re-
quire so much skill to operate them sue
ceSsfully that the milk must be hauled to
one central point, instead of the cream, as
was formerly done under the pan-setting
| process. The capacity of the large size
! separators is $4,000 pounds of milk an
hour, and they cost $500 each delivered in
! San Francisco.
"a creamery receiving the milk of 1000
cows once every day, or over 20 900 pounds
of milk each morning, which should be
separated within four hours from the de-
| livery of the first load to the creamery.
must have at least four separators of the
largest capacity, and no doubt five would
do the work better They should have also
20-horse power boiler and 15-horse power
| engine, and cream watts sufficient to store
the cream forty hours before churning. If
the cream is churned before it is ripe the
butter will be dry and lacking in quality.
| They must also have power churns. power
butter-workers and, above all, plenty of
clear, cold water and an abundance of hot
water to keep everything clean and sweet
tod IL &c
patron or conducted some distance from
the creamery to a corral, where it is fed to
the calves or hogs. For the Eastern mar
ket the butter is packed solid in 60-pound
tubs, as that market requires only solid
packed butter and there is no demand for
squares. But Californians demand squares
weighing about one and three-fourths
each, or sixty squares to the box, actually
weighing 96 to ITO pounds. No doubt this
custom of selling butter in squares, hardly
two Of which are alike, is demoraliZing,
and the time is not far distant when con.
sumers will demand uniform weights on
the squares. The question does not come
up in the Eastern market as they buy
only solid packed butter, sixteen ounces to
the pound.
'There are at the present writing more
than 100 creameries in the State that have
been erected during the past two years and
many more will be running before our
fall rain. The larger number of these are
cooperative stock companies, with $4,000
to $40 900 paid-up capital, the stock being
subscribed by the dairymen. The build
lngs were erected and the machinery
and the outfttings furnished and put
in operation under one contract by
dealers in dairy supplies located in San
Francisco or Chicago, but the dairymen
complain that they have paid big prices
for their creameries and that the contract
OrS have made excessive profits In con-
lied are letting the contracts for erecting
the buildings to their local carpenters and
asking for bids from rival, responsible
houses for the outfittings complete, the
same to be delivered in San Francisco. In
this way the cost OF creamery plant has