The Creamery War Comes to the Yakima Valley
Seattle money builds a permanent milk plant at North Yakima, and the dairymen of Central Washington suddenly find themselves with buyers competing for every can of cream.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Meadowbrook Company of Seattle are putting in a creamery plant at North Yakima, in quarters which they have leased for five years. The equipment, which is furnished by W. J. Beggs, is first-class in every particular and represents an outlay of over $2,000. The Meadowbrook Company announce that they have established the creamery at Yakima as a permanent enterprise. In connection, this company will have their wagons collect eggs and poultry from the farmers, paying therefor the best current prices. The farmers will be supplied with separators, and the cream collected by the company's wagons.
It is evident that there is to be no cessation in the competition of creameries in Central Washington. On the contrary, the establishment of new plants signifies that the rivalry for the patronage of the dairy farmers will be stronger than ever. Guess the dairymen of the Yakima valley will get about all there is coming to them this year.
Yakima is growing faster than any other dairy district in the state, having for several years past doubled itself. Seattle alone receives from the eastern market two carloads of butter per day, not to say anything of the butter received by boat from Oregon and California. Western Washington's available lands are supporting all the dairy stock they can, hence the supply must come from Central and Eastern Washington. The Yakima valley is particularly adapted to dairying. Its immense crops of clover and alfalfa, the hay best suited for milk production, and the abundance of pure water make it an ideal district for carrying on this industry with profit. I believe the Sunnyside and Yakima electric line will be a great factor in promoting dairy interests. Sunnyside farmers now receive 5 cents per hundred less for their milk than the Yakima farmer because of the expense of getting the milk to a shipping point. With a railroad near at hand this would not be the case. I look for great things from the Yakima country in the way of dairying within the next few years. — W. J. Beggs, in Yakima Herald.
“Seattle alone receives from the eastern market two carloads of butter per day... hence the supply must come from Central and Eastern Washington.”
A century before "buy local" became a slogan, Seattle was importing two carloads of butter a day from back East while its own hinterland scrambled to build plants, roads and rail links fast enough to feed it. Substitute apples, hops or wine grapes for butter and the same regional equation is being argued out in the Yakima Valley today: who processes the crop, who ships it, and who keeps the margin.
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