236 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



are a little more attractive than beef-":rowini^. For instance, we can 

 dispose of our product every day, week or month, and receive our 

 cash in hand, while in growing beef we want eight months and even 

 a year in order to get our product into cash. It is not my style to 

 square around in order to make things appear in favor of one inter- 

 est or the other, for certainly we should shape our agricultural inter- 

 ests so as to be of the greatest advantage to us financially ; and it 

 would be a true statement to make that the dairy interest is a better 

 paying business at present than the beef-growing interest. But let 

 me ask, do you have the least idea that this state of things will al- 

 ways prevail? Are you and I, Mr. Chairman, going to stand aside 

 and see our neighbor receive $100 income each from his cows and we 

 receive only about one-half that amount upon our steers? Wh}', cer- 

 tainly not. We will drift iuto dairying, and so the drift will go on 

 throughout the whole country until these two interests even up in 

 profit. It is the dairy and the sheep interest that pay the best this year. 

 It is liable to be beef and the fruit crop next. Hence, I claim that 

 a variety of productions is the broadest and most reliable road to 

 success in farming in Maine. 



Now, this has nothing to do with competing with the West, but it 

 does have something to do with these two interests competing with 

 one another in our State. If I should ask the question. Can the 

 Maine farmer make a good profit at the present prices of beef? the 

 answer would be, No. And if we should ask the western beef 

 grower the same question, his answer would be No, too ; and 3'et we 

 are receiving higher prices for beef than farmers received before the 

 great areas of cheap feeding grounds of the AVest were utilized for 

 cattle growing. I dare say that there are farmers present to-day 

 that have sold seven-foot cattle for $50 to $75 a pair, and did not 

 grumble at the price received either. Let us consider that it re- 

 quires 14 bushels of No. 1 wheat in Dakota to be equal to 100 

 pounds of choice beef in Maine to-da^'. If we were suffering from 

 the effects of a depression in prices, and the western farmers were 

 growing rich by the sale of their productions, then we might com- 

 plain. But is this the case? 



I recently read an abstract commenting upon large cattle ranches 

 in the Northwest. The gentleman was a ranche owner himself. He 

 quotes that large dividends had ceased, and cattle raising must be 

 managed more carefully and with more economy' in the future. He 

 says the Southwest, and Arizona included, is subject to long and 



