d the first shot at us.
Suppose we move over and see what's under discussion."

As they approached the group, they heard Jim Irwin answering something
which Ezra Bronson had said.

"You think so, Ezra," said he, "and it seems reasonable that big
creameries like those at Omaha, Sioux City, Des Moines and the other
centralizer points can make butter cheaper than we would do here--but
we've the figures that show that they aren't economical."

"They can't make good butter, for one thing," said Newton Bronson
cockily.

"Why can't they?" asked Olaf Hansen, the father of Bettina.

"Well," said Newton, "they have to have so much cream that they've got to
ship it so far that it gets rotten on the way, and they have to renovate
it with lime and other ingredients before they can churn it."

"Well," said Raymond Simms, "I reckon they sell their butter fo' all it's
wuth; an' they cain't get within from foah to seven cents a pound as much
fo' it as the farmers' creameries in Wisconsin and Minnesota get fo'
theirs."

"That's a fact, Olaf," said Jim.

"How do you kids know so darned much about it?" queried Pete.

"Huh!" sniffed Bettina. "We've been reading about it, and writing letters
about it, and figuring percentages on it in school all winter. We've done
arithmetic and geography and grammar and I don't know what else on it."

"Well, I'm agin' any schoolin'," said Pete, "that makes kids smarter in
farmin' than their parents and their parents' hired men. Gi' me another
swig o' that lemonade, Jim!"

"You see," said Jim to his audience, meanwhile pouring the lemonade, "the
centralizer creamery is uneconomic in several ways. It has to pay
excessive transportation charges. It has to pay excessive commissions to
its cream buyers. It has to accept cream without proper inspection, and
mixes the good with the bad. It makes such long shipments that the cream
spoils in transit and lowers the quality of the butter. It can't make the
best use of the buttermilk. All these losses and leaks the farmers have to
stand. I can prove--and so can the six or eight pupils in the Woodruff
school who have been working on the cream question this winter--that we
could make at least six cents a pound on our butter if we had a
cooperative creamery and all sent our cream to it."

"Well," said Ezra Bronson, "let's start one."

"I'll go in," said Olaf Hansen.

"Me, too," said Con Bonner.

There was a general chorus of assent. Jim had convinced his