SECRETARY'S REPORT. 7Y 



butter and cheese as in our former calculation, viz : six ounces of 

 butter at twenty cents per pound, or fifteen ounces of cheese at 

 ten cents per pound from each gallon, and making the same deduc- 

 tion for dairy labor, viz : four cents per pound on the butter and 

 two cents on the cheese, we have, as the result, 281 lbs. of butter, 

 bringing in $44.96, or T03 lbs. of cheese, bringing in $56.24 — in 

 either product a handsome profit upon the outlay instead of a con- 

 siderable loss in the other. Let me invite the attention of farmers 

 to a critical examination of these figures and comparisons. If they 

 embrace serious errors or fallacies, I shall be as happy as any one 

 to have them pointed out. No doubt can be entertained that the 

 rearing of young stock and store cattle, as usually conducted, has 

 proved a miserably unprofitable business. Even drovers them- 

 selves, upon being closely questioned, freely admit that their trade 

 in such stock would cease at once should farmers insist upon 

 remunerating prices, and farmers have submitted to these low rates 

 merely because they have not clearly seen a more profitable method 

 of converting their crops and herbage into money. 



There is need to render farming more productive, and thus more 

 attractive to skill and capital. To do so there is need to adopt the 

 best methods. To find out what are the best methods, we must 

 keep accounts, and calculate as closely with our cattle and our 

 crops as with our debtors and creditors. 



As the result of such inquiries and investigations as I have been 

 able to make in a general way, the conclusion has been reached, 

 taking the proceeds of other methods of consumption as a basis, 

 that throughout large portions of Maine milk can be produced at a 

 cost rather below than above five cents per gallon,* or, in other 

 words, that at this price farmers would realize as much for their 

 pasturage, hay and other foods as they now do by keeping other 

 neat stock than milch cows. If this be so, and if, by converting a 

 larger share of vegetable food into dairy products, six, seven or eight 

 cents per gallon, after deducting for dairy labor, can be realized, it 

 follows that to the same extent an advance of twenty, forty or 

 sixty per cent, upon present returns may be secured. 



*In an interesting article in the Patent Office Report for 1861 on the consumption 

 of milk, its value in Maine is estimated at 1.36 cents per quart or about 5;^ cents per 

 gallon. The value of the dairy products of the United States in 1860 is stated in the 

 same paper at upwards of two hundred millions of dollars, or as mucli as that of the 

 cotton crop in ordinary times. 



