244 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



There is a broad application of the text: " Seek ye first the king- 

 dom of God and Llis righteousness, and all these things shall be 

 added unto you." Improve the soil of your farm and the soil of 

 your immortal nature, and wealth and happiness will surely be 

 your reward. 



Must Build for Permanency. To come directly to the dairy 

 interest, we must stop building in a hurried, speculative spirit, 

 and build with reference to a permanent future business. Every 

 farmer ought to decide whether his farm is to be devoted to grain- 

 raising, to stock raising, or to dairy purposes, and build ac- 

 cordingly. In my section, hundreds of thousands of dollars have 

 been lost by the erection of cheap factories and cheap private 

 dairy houses. There was some excuse for this when the factory 

 system first started. It was not yet demonstrated how it would 

 work, and even if suited to some localities it was not known how 

 it would operate in others. So our dairymen knocked together 

 cheap buildings, that would answer for a few years and then could 

 be thrown away or converted into hay barns or stables, without 

 much loss. They furnished these buildings in the cheapest man- 

 ner possible, often, — but not always, — got the cheapest help to be 

 had, and commenced taking in milk. The experiment proved 

 successful, so far as demonstrating the utility of the factory sys- 

 tem. It was profitable for the factoryman, and it was profitable 

 to the patron — especially so to the man with a small dairy. It 

 furnished more money, it afforded him quick returns and gave him 

 readj 1 money to use, and — what was not, by any means, the least 

 of its benefits — it relieved the hard-working, long-suffering and 

 patient wife of a very great burden — the care and work of the 

 dairy. To her, it was like opening the prison door^ and bidding 

 her go free. It was no wonder, therefore, that the factory system 

 at once became popular. 



But while this system was a vast improvement on the old one, 

 in many ways, our dairymen lost hundreds of thousands of 

 dollars, and continue to lose, by the hasty and cheap manner in 

 which it was introduced. They lost, not as compared with the 

 old system, but by not securing all the benefits of the new. Few 

 of the earlier built factories were erected with any reference to 

 controlling the temperature — of either warming them in the cold 

 weather of the spring and fall, or of keeping them dry and cool 

 during the wet and hot weather of the summer. The consequence 

 was — very great loss from imperfect curing, deterioration in 



