DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. l8l 



my milk costs me four cents in my dairy.) I said, "Why do 

 all 01 the great manufacturing concerns build the most modern 

 plants and equip them with the most modern machinery ? Sim- 

 ply to lessen the cost of production," and that is true. I can 

 produce milk cheaper in my new barn than I ever could before. 

 One man asked that the records might be left and that an 

 expert be put on them to go through them and make more of 

 a summary than I had made for one year, showing the exact 

 cost of feed, and so on, where I had got the four cents a quart. 

 I said, "Surely ; I am glad to leave the records," and they were 

 left with the expert accountant. I had a summary sent me, and 

 I am going to tell you what my milk for eight years brought me 

 a quart: reckoning thirty cents a hundred, practically three 

 cents a quart — that is what my milk brought me and I fared as 

 well as anyone. There is a particular friend of mine who has 

 a creamery in the good town of Waterf ord ; no one has ever 

 found fault with the tests or with anything that I know of ; I 

 am sending milk there today and am perfectly satisfied, but that 

 does not make it profitable to my business to do it. If it were 

 not for the gradual improvement of my farm and of my dairy 

 cattle, I would not be able to be in the business at all. There 

 is not a man in the state who can buy feed at the present prices 

 and sell at that profit and continue his business a year unless 

 he has some other source of income. 



The question now comes, how to overcome this? We have 

 no time to devise means here. Your President has started 

 you on the right track when he says it means "organization." 

 Most of you know that the dairy business is on the point of 

 being put out of existence and we are all interested alike ; we 

 want the business to go and the world wants the business to go. 

 Forty-four carloads of cattle went out of New York State 

 recently upon the market, simply because it was not worth while 

 to milk them ; that is the condition outside of Maine. It is not 

 possible to get back into dairying in a moment ; after you once 

 get out of cows, you are out for a long time, so it is necessary 

 that steps be taken to make it profitable, in order that people 

 can stay in the business. The trend of the whole thing now is 

 to get away from the farm ; get away from the steady job of 

 taking care of the cows for 365 days in the year. People do 

 not want to do it under the present conditions. I could tell you 



