12 BOARD OF AGlirCULTURE. 



might give larger returns, for even potato growing was a business 

 that would reward the laborer, in a measure, in proi)ortlon to the 

 degree of skill and intelligence bi'ouglit to bear ni)on it. To-da^' it 

 i-equires a high degree of skill and intelligence to grow a good crop 

 of potatoes upon ordinary farming lands, but a good crop pays a 

 much greater prolil now than it did fiftj' or sixty years ago. 



Market gardening and the production of choice fruits and flowers 

 requires a very high degree of skill, but if asked to indicate the 

 branch of agriculture which stands at the opposite extreme from 

 potato growing I should have little hesitation in pointing to the 

 dairy. Butter making, if carried on in a manner approaching any 

 whei'e near towards perfection, is surely a very high art. The 

 choicest butter, new from the churn and worker, may, in delicacy of 

 shade and fineness of aroma vie with the florist's highest work, 

 while the choicest fruits a.vo. improved by the addition of a coating 

 of fresh, sweet cream. Do not understand me as claiming that the 

 production of any particular crop is eithei" more or less honorable 

 than the production of any other crop that is worthy the best efforts 

 of the cultivator. 



The glowing of tobacco and the production of grain to be con- 

 verted into intoxicating drinks are occupations that I am not ready 

 to admit as being worthy the efforts of any cultivator. But the 

 point I wish now to estalilish is, that skilled labor [)ays better than 

 unskilled labor, and that, as dairying calls for more skill and more 

 intelligence than any other branch of agriculture, so it may be ex- 

 pected that it will, as I believe it does, pay better than an}- other of 

 equal magnitude. 



It is a curious fact, but a fact nevertheless, that men seem willing 

 to pay the most money for those things which they least need, or 

 which are perhaps positivel}' injurious. It is not the cigar bills nor 

 the wine bills at which consumers grumble so much, but it is the 

 advance of a dime on a bushel of potatoes or a penny on a pound 

 of flour. 



Looking at it from the stand point of a practical dairyman, I 

 cannot complain that customers will pay ten times as much for a 

 pound of butter as for a pound of bread grain, even though I may 

 know that the grain has actually ten times the food value of the 

 butter. 



'Were it not for our habits and tastes, butter could be dispensed 

 with from our tables with perhaps less actual loss than from the 

 denial of any other common article of food, and yet we pay here iu 



