CREAMERIES. The earliest creameries in Europe were the result of political movements. Largely in consequence of the loss of Schleswig-Holstein and the closing of the German market, the farmers of Denmark were the first to alter their methods to suit the new and radical change in European agriculture, due to better transport and the development of virgin soils overseas. Their first organized endeavour was to found factories, where their milk could be made into butter or cheese of a uniform standard, suitable for new markets, especially Britain. In the history of such cream eries, as they were called in England, or laiteries in France, nothing is more remarkable than the progressive absorption of individual and proprietary creameries by cooperative creameries. This movement was rapid and thorough in all the Scandinavian coun tries and in Ireland, where by creamery many speakers and writers mean a cooperative organization. Historically the credit for the first creamery may be given to the Swiss. A Dane, who travelled in Switzerland in 1820, wrote an account of the practice of Swiss 'farmers of sending their cows to a central organization in the sweet upper pastures, where most of the milk was made into cheese; and each small farmer was paid in due ratio according to the yield of his few cows. The consequent increase in profit and consequently in cows was marked, and the movement soon spread into France. But such cooperation remained as yet local and small in extent. The modern creamery may be said to date from 1866, when the first distributing society was founded in Denmark. The change from corn-growing to dairy farming created the con ditions for an agricultural industry and "in connection with the cooperative movement blossomed forth in cooperative dairies, slaughter-houses and societies for buying and selling." The move ment began a rapid acceleration in 1882 when the Hjedding dairy was founded by a group of farmers in the south-west of Jutland. The number of creameries advanced in Denmark between 1882 and 1914 from 2 to 1,503 and of these 1,168 were cooperative. Invention helped the industry, especially the de Laval separator, which first came into use in 1879.
Ireland.—In the British Isles the creamery is especially asso ciated with Ireland. A new order did not begin till 1889, when Sir Horace Plunkett, who had recently returned from ten years' ranching in the United States, saw the plight of the farmers and realized that the only hope lay in cooperation. "We began," he says, "in the year 1889, by organizing cooperative creameries in the dairying districts and cooperative credit societies in the poor est communities." After difficult beginnings the work began to flourish, and the Irish creamery became a model. Between 1889 and 1926 inclusive the aggregate sale of butter from Irish cream eries reached a total of £84,000,000. Except for a set-back in the rebellion of 1916 and the subsequent years, the progress has been marked and continuous.
To-day creameries of an elaborate sort are established all round the world; and the equipment everywhere is roughly similar. Boilers, separators of at least a capacity of Boo gallons an hour, Pasteurizers, refrigerating machines, cream-ripening vats, churns and a laboratory are common properties. It is considered by Irish organizers that a central cooperative creamery can be profitably started, if the produce of i,000 cows can be secured within a radius of 5 or 6 miles. The constitution of cooperative creameries differs considerably; but in most is traceable the influence of the Roch dale system, which in Ireland at any rate, was consciously imitated.
The first creamery in the United States was established in 1861. The centrifugal cream separator (introduced in 1879) made it possible to separate the cream from a large volume of milk in a short time. The hand-separator (introduced in 1887), now widely used, enabled farmers to separate the cream at home. Large cen tralizing creameries to which cream is shipped from distances as great as 30o miles have been established. In highly developed sections most creameries obtain their milk or cream from within a radius of 15 miles. A large number of such factories are operated by farmers as cooperative enterprises. In 1899 there were 421 million pounds of butter produced at creameries as against 1,072 millions produced on the farm. In 1928 there were 1,500 millions produced at creameries as against 500 millions of pounds produced on the farms.
The multiplication of creameries has been rapid all over the British Empire, not least in Australasia. In Australia in 1925 the creameries of the 6 states agreed to a levy of 1 d. on every pound of butter and out of this 3d. is paid per pound on all butter ex ported. The factories are recouped by the selling agents who charge 3d. a lb. extra on all butter consumed within the country. This system on principle had been already adopted by the Federal Government in its Dairy Export Control act of 1914. On some what similar lines a Control Board for dairy exports was set up in New Zealand in 3 1 2. (W. B. T.)