330 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



nearly, if not quite, double the money iavestecl in banking and commercial 

 pursuits. It requires fifteen million cows to supply the demand for milk and 

 its products in the United States. To feed these cows, sixty millions of acres 

 of land are under cultivation. The agricultural and dairying implements are 

 worth two hundred million dollars. The men employed number seven hun- 

 dred thousand, and the horses one million. These horses and cows consume 

 annually thirty million tons of hay, ninety million bushels of corn meal, the 

 same of oat meal, two hundred and seventy-five million bushels of oats, ten 

 million bushels of bran, and thirty million bushels of corn, to say nothing of 

 the brewery grains and other questionable feed given. It costs four hundred 

 million dollars to feed these cows and horses. The average price paid to the 

 laborer for wages is twenty dollars per month, amounting to one hundred and 

 sixty-eight millions of dollars annually. The average cow yields about four 

 hundred and fifty gallons of milk a year, giving a total of sixty billions seven 

 hundred and fifty million gallons of milk a year." 



Now, what is be done with all this enormous quantity of milk? 



Quite a fair proportion of it is made into cheese, and a very large proportion 

 of it is sold in towns and cities by the quart and pint for family use. But by 

 far the largest proportion is made into butter, for butter is a staple article of 

 food and commerce. Bread is considered the staff of life, and may not 

 the same term be applied to butter, for whether the family be rich or poor it 

 enters largely into the make-up of every meal, while the article is good, bad, 

 or indifferent in quality and large or small in quantity. In Michigan, very 

 much of the butter is made by the women of the farm. In the foregoing 

 statistics the term men is applied to those employed in the dairying interest. 

 It is true in large establishments, but there is so much of the dairy business 

 done on a small scale that it is expected the wives and daughters of the house- 

 hold will manage the butter-making. Of course the men do the milking, 

 feeding, and caring for the cows, but the pails of milk are turned over to the 

 care of the women. Farmers keep from one to twenty cows, and the milk is 

 expected to be made into butter, mostly. Some of these households have 

 modern conveniences, good cellars, plenty of ice, and, by far the greatest 

 requisite, a sort of "cast-iron constitution." But very many housekeepers 

 have none of these helpers, and yet they are expected to compete with the 

 first-class butter-makers of the land. A person cannot offer a greater insult 

 to some of the farmers' wives than to insinuate they do not make good butter. 

 Yet the amount of poor butter on the market is tons, and the number of poor 

 butter-makers are legion. 



It is said the "American people are a nation of grumblers ;" and in regard 

 to the butter question they are. We hear inquiries and complaints on every 

 hand. Shall we eat much butter? What shall we do with our butter? How 

 shall we market it, and how shall we sell it? If we agitate the question that 

 butter ought to be graded the same as any other commodity, as wheat or corn, 

 the ordinary groceryman begs leave to demur against any such procedure. Hfr 

 wants to retain the custom of the one who makes poor butter as well as the 

 one who makes an article of extra quality, and hence he mixes all together, 

 that the good may sell the poor. A few rich, fastidious people, who desire to 

 use only the best the market affords, are willing to pay a fair, remunerative 

 price for excellent butter; but there is a large class who complain of the price, 

 and still a larger class who complain of the quality. The making of butter in 

 the past has been an up-hill business; not much encouragement held out to 

 those who desire to make an excellent article, only a clear conscience and a 



