42 VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S REPORT. 



West are elbowing the home-made product out of its own place. 

 Every year the proportion of Western goods sold in the Boston 

 market increases, while that of Eastern make diminishes. 

 This is where the shoe pinches. It behooves us then as dairy- 

 men to consider carefully any and every legitimate means which 

 may be suggested looking towards the wider use of Eastern 

 dairy products. 



A general in planning a campaign seeks to learn the nature, 

 extent, location and disposition of the enemy's forces, and the 

 advantages he possesses ; he measures against them his own 

 resources ; and, finally, studies wherein he ma3'- lesson his oppo- 

 nent's chances of battle and improve his own. Let us, simil- 

 arly, in surveying the field of strife for supremacy in the dairy 

 trade observe : 



(i.) What marked advantages over the East are possessed 

 by the West. 



(2.) Wherein has New England advantage over Western 

 rivalry. 



(3.) How may New England dairying more successfully 

 meet the competition of the great West. 



I. WESTERN ADVANTAGES. 



Several circumstances conspire to favor Western success in 

 dairying, among which may be mentioned 



1. Cheap feed. 



2. Large territory and large numbers. 



3. Longer pasture season. 



4. Ready use of new methods. 



5. Educative agencies. 



(1.) Cheap feed. This advantage is of stupendous import- 

 ance. The low cost for food in the making of Western butter 

 more than any other one factor makes Eastern competition in- 

 creasingly difficult. The Western farmer can usually raise a ton 

 of dry matter in silage at less cost than can his Eastern brother ; 

 his hay is grown cheaper ; and as for grain feeds, the compari- 

 son is most disheartening, mill-stuffs averaging throughout the 

 West two thirds of Eastern prices, while corn is so plenty that it 

 is sometimes cheaper to use as fuel than is coal. Prof. Hrecker 

 reports the manufacture of butter from a large herd at less 

 than ten cents a pound for food the year round, buying, as he 

 told the writer last fall, bran at $4.00 to $4.50 per ton f. o. b. 

 Minneapolis in car load lots. The difference in freight rates on 

 a ton of bran and on the butter which a ton of bran will make 

 is large. Such a handicap as this is indeed difficult to over- 

 come. 



