These conditions continued, without material change, up to the middle of the century. Some improvement was noticeable in cattle and appliances, and in some sections dairy farming became a specialty. With the growth of towns and cities, the business of milk supply increased and better methods prevailed. Butter-making for home use and local trade, in a small way, was common wherever cows were kept, and in some places there was a surplus sufficient to be sent to the large markets. Vermont and New York became known as butter producing States. “Franklin County butter,” from counties of this name in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts, was known throughout New England, and the fame of “Orange County” and “Goshen” butter, from New York, was still more extensive. New York, Ohio, and Northern Pennsylvania produced large quantities of cheese; and the total supply was so much in excess of domestic demand, that cheese exports from the United States, mainly to Great Britain, became established, and ranged from three to seventeen million pounds a year. The twenty-five years following 1850 was a period of remarkable activity and progress in the dairy interests of the country. At first, the agricultural exhibitions or “cattle shows,” and the enterprise of importers, turned attention towards the improvement of farm animals, and breeds of cattle specially noted for dairy qualities were introduced and began to win the favor of dairymen. Then the early efforts at coöperative dairying were recognized as successful, and were copied until the cheese factory became an established institution. Once fairly started, in the heart of the great cheese-making district of New York, the factory system spread with much rapidity. The “war period” lent additional impetus to the forward movement. The foreign demand for cheese grew fast, and the price, which was ten cents per pound and less in 1860, rose to fifteen cents in 1863, and to twenty cents and over in 1865. There were two cheese factories in Oneida County in 1854, and twenty-five in 1862. The system spread to Herkimer and adjoining counties, and in 1863 there were 100 factories in New York, besides some in Ohio and other States. The number increased to 300 in the whole country in 1865, to 600 in two years more, and to over 1000 in 1869. From that time the coöperative or factory system practically superseded the manufacture of cheese on farms. Establishments for the making of butter in quantity, from the milk or cream collected from numerous farms, soon followed the cheese factories. Such are properly butter factories, but the name of “creamery” has come into general use for an establishment of this kind, and seems unlikely to change. Placing the real beginning of cheese factories as a system of dairying in 1861 or 1862, the first creamery was started in 1861, in Orange County, New York. In Illinois, the first cheese factory was built in 1863, and the first creamery in 1867; in Iowa, the respective dates were 1866 and