DAIRY MERITING. 99 



farmers have been receiving 30 cents a pound for butter fat; 

 that is the highest price. We have been receiving 35 cents, and 

 that is what we are getting today. Maine is the best State in 

 the Union, provided the average farmer gives as much attention 

 to his business, puts as much work into it, as the farmers do in 

 the West and over across the Hne. I had a gentleman from 

 Ontario, Mr. Andrew Elhott, with me at the farmers' institutes 

 this fall, and I trust many of the farmers have learned valuable 

 lessons from his instructions. He tells us with no uncertain 

 sound that the men over in his country watch their cows. 

 Within the last ten years they have been making great strides 

 in dairying, and in building up the fertility of their farms, selling 

 nothing but the finished product. They have largely connected 

 with dairying the pork industry, the raising of the bacon hog. 

 They once sold to this country as high as $18,000,000 worth ofi 

 barley, but when we adopted the McKinley Bill and imposed a 

 tariff of thirty cents a bushel on the barley that was imported, 

 the Canadian farmers found that it was impossible for them to 

 raise barley for export to this country under these conditions. 

 A commission appointed by their government was sent to the 

 British Islands to see if barley could be profitably exported to 

 that country, and while there, their attention was called to a 

 new industry, the raising of the bacon hog, and they conceived 

 the possibility of Canada becoming the producer of a superior 

 class of hog product that would not meet the competition of the 

 United States, and that would command a high price. This 

 commission reported to the farmers of Ontario that barley could 

 not be raised profitably for export, and recommended that they 

 feed their surplus to the bacon hog. The farmers took to this 

 new idea very reluctantly, but the matter was discussed at 

 farmers' institutes, in the agricultural press and in bulletins sent 

 out, and finally the farmers very generally adopted the method 

 of feeding their surplus grain, and selling the finished product. 

 Formerly they had been dairying for only six months of the 

 year, but now more attention was given to this industry, and 

 the importation and breeding of the bacon breeds of swine, the 

 Yorkshire and Tamworth, began. From these industries they 

 have received good returns, and they have also found that with 

 the dressing from their added stock, and a good system of crop 

 rotation including the clover plant, they have been able to build 



