DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 21/ 



they used to sell annually from fifty to seventy-five thousand 

 sheep for a big concern — Swift's — they have so reduced the 

 price of lamb that they have killed all competition. As a result 

 there are no sheep, and we have the highest prices at present. 

 The same thing with cows. That does not encourage a large 

 producer, a man who can produce large quantities of milk. I 

 live near a condensed milk factory. The team passes every 

 day, carrying milk to that factory. When the factory started, 

 eighteen or twenty years ago, everyone wanted to furnish milk. 

 But they kept exacting more and more of their patrons, and 

 now they have employed men at large salaries to go out and 

 solicit patrons from a distance ; people who could never be 

 dairymen in the world. Dairymen are born and not made, as 

 the poets are. They have kept the milk down and have in- 

 creased their expenses a good deal more than if they had got 

 the milk from local dealers. They have paid one dollar a day 

 for a man to haul less than eighty pounds of milk to their team 

 and then they haul it to Newport. Now, there are other 

 instances of the same kind. Are you creamery men just? Are 

 you fair? Would you ask your patrons to test their cows and 

 then give them one cent more for their product, and mix their 

 product with the other dealers? Is it a square deal, when you 

 say you will give ten cents more per hundred weight for milk 

 cooled to a certain temperature and then mix it with milk that 

 has not been cooled at all? I think that is hardly fair usage. 

 We want good milk, and I believe there are enough farmers in 

 Maine who will flood these factories with milk when it is 

 profitable ; and that is the question with every industry in the 

 world. Everything that is profitable invites capital. 



Now, as to the matter of oleo. This is something that has 

 come up within a few years most rapidly. It was somewhere 

 in the eighties when oleo was first put on the market. Now, 

 one hundred and fifty millions of pounds annually are coming 

 in competition with the dairy products of every dairy state in 

 the country. No one can question but that it is a good, healthy 

 food. However, I believe that we see the necessity — and see it 

 most forcefully — of men in our United States Congress and in 

 our State legislature who understand what our farmers need. 



We understand that oleo is made of animal fats and vege- 

 table oils, and it comes in competition with our butter ; of 



