DAIRY MEETING. lOI 



REMARKS BY MR. DODGE, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



There are one or two facts that I should Hke to bring a Httle 

 Hght to bear upon. To start with, I might mention a principle 

 with which I think you will all agree, that dairy products as a 

 general thing are not suited to transportation over very long 

 distances. This is essentially true of milk for consumption as 

 such, and of sweet cream. And I think you will agree that to 

 a large extent it is true of the best quality of butter. We can- 

 not bring that in from great distances. Now you may not think 

 that the next few facts I have to mention have much bearing on 

 the State of Maine, but it seems to me that they have. In seven 

 states, which are more or less grouped by themselves, the states 

 of New England, and New York, there is a population of some- 

 where in the vici-nity of thirteen millions. There are nine cities 

 in those seven states, each of which has a population of upwards 

 of 100,000. Of those are New York City and Boston which of 

 course are away beyond this limit. In those seven states there 

 are fourteen more cities with a population of between 50,000 

 and 100,000. And after all, in this densely populated section 

 there is something like one-third of the territory which is abso- 

 lutely non agricultural, — the Berkshire Hills, the Green and the 

 White Mountains, and this immense region of woods and 

 swamps and ponds in Maine. That leaves but a comparatively 

 small portion of this densely populated region to supply the 

 products for immediate consumption. The leading among these 

 products are of course sweet cream, milk, and the first quality of 

 butter. Coming from the western part of New York State in 

 this direction, as soon as we pass the central part of the state, 

 or about there, we get into a territory which is essentially that 

 of the dairy cow, and from there up to the eastern end of Maine 

 we have a country dominated by the dairy cow. There are a 

 few specialties, such as tobacco in the Connecticut Valley, some 

 trucking regions around Boston, and the potato region in north- 

 ern Maine, but aside from those the dairy cow predominates. 



The city of New York uses an immense amount of milk as 

 such. It draws that milk all the way from the St. Lawrence 

 Valley, and eastward to the Hudson Valley and even to Connec- 

 ticut and Massachusetts. That leaves, on the east side of the 



