HOW CAN WE COMPETE WITH THE WEST IN DAIRYING. 45 



cream, sterilized condensed milk and the like in New England 

 markets on an eqnai footing with home made products. 



L,et us now balance accounts. 



Against the cheaper food, larger area and numbers and mod- 

 ern methods of the bustling West may be placed a somewhat 

 better grade of Eastern cattle and a milk and cream trade thus far 

 not threatened by competition. The candid observer must con- 

 fess that the West has the best of it. The difficulty of competing 

 with the cheaply made butter of the West is yearly increasing. 

 No protective tariff can avail, legislation is to be invoked to no 

 purpose. The business conditions of the present day are very 

 different from those of our forefathers and will so remain. It is 

 folly to bemoan the high prices of former days, useless to combat 

 modern business conditions with out of date methods or ancient 

 prejudices. I know of no easy way to success, no royal road to 

 competency, no sure cure to the ills of this dangerous competition. 

 The sole resource of New England dairymen lies in the awaken- 

 ing of their own energies. They may most surely stem the tide 

 of Western rivalry by a thorough study of the dairy business, by 

 the application of business methods to their vocation, by the adop- 

 tion of such modern ideas as seem applicable to their conditions. 



The dairyman of today, to be successful, must work with his 

 head quite as much as with his hands. He must call upon his 

 brain as well as upon his muscle. He may well recollect the 

 remark of one of the famous painters of the last generation whose 

 coloring was the despair of his fellow artists, who, when asked 

 with what he mixed his paints to produce such wonderful effects, 

 replied, "With brains." 



III. HOW TO MEET WESTERN COMPETITION. 



In my judgment those engaged in dairy husbandry in New 

 England, in order to hold their local markets against the rapid 

 inroads of Western competition, need to consider three funda- 

 mentals, to study, if you will, three courses in the school of dairy 

 experience. 



i. Economy of manufacture. 



2. Markets. 



3. The dairy business. 



I freely grant that this triad is not stated in a logical order, 

 that in putting the dairy business last I seem to have placed the 

 horse after the cart. Yet I wished to make this distinction be- 

 tween headings i and 3 for reasons which will be apparent as 

 the discussion develops. 



