SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR-BOOK— PART V. 385 



quantity of milk and butter. It may not be out of place to discuss with, 

 you some phases of the dairy business especially relating to the quality 

 of dairy products. I am the more inclined to do this after informing my- 

 self as to the details of the movement of butter and cheese in the trade 

 of the world. As a citizen of America I am not angered when some 

 other country takes the lead of us in quantity of exports but I am 

 irritated at my own country when some other people beats us in quality 

 and, for that reason, takes from us a desired market. 



Our neighbors to the north are not slow in studying trade relations. 

 Our conceit leads us sometimes to neglect this important duty. 



Were we in California it might pay us to study what those countries 

 borderig the Indian Ocean and the Chinese Sea might demand in the 

 way of animal fats. In Iowa and to the eastward we are interested 

 in the other direction and to us comes the question of the supply of a 

 well known demand of our eastern cities for milk, butter and cheese and 

 a party understood but scarcely felt call from the British Islands. Our 

 Canadian neighbors have studied this market greatly to their adventage. 

 Last year the price of butter was so high in America that a question as 

 to the disposal of a surplus did not rise. No one cared about an English 

 market. We had all we could do to supply our own cities. How is it 

 today? If I can read anything of the signs of the times, your wonderful 

 crops of corn and oats, of alfalfa and clover spell out low prices alike for 

 the cereals themselves and for the butter and cheese made from them. 

 Already the cry has gone up that the eastern markets have a surfeit of 

 butter and that none but the best goods can find acceptable buyers. 

 America is producing more butter than Americans need. What shall be 

 done? Shall we make less butter or shall we find a market outside of our 

 own borders? The Canadians say find the market and increase the pro- 

 duction. Find exactly what the markets demand, what they will pay the 

 highest price for, then make just that class of goods. 



A Canadian correspondent writing to the Hoard's Dairyman says 

 "The export this season is better than it has been for some years past. 

 It is probably due to the superior quality of this seasons make. So fine 

 is the quality of this years make that exporters are advising makers to 

 keep it up to the present standard and a market for this article was 

 assured, even were supplies from other sources more plentiful. A con- 

 tinuance of this condition will give Canadian butter a prestige in the 

 English market very little of that below to the best Danish. Last week 

 (September 1) as high as twenty-three cents was paid at some of the 

 creameries for butter to export. The export up to the end of July shows 

 a total of 237.533 packages, as against 151,113 packages for the same 

 period in 1904." 



WHiat have we been doing all this time? Mostly eating our own 

 butter at a price prohibiting export. Now comes the time when we need 

 and must have an outlet for our surplus. Denmark has held the best 

 English market with Canada a close second. Canada and the United 

 States ought to furnish practically all of the butter which England 

 imports. The natural trend of trade is between those islands and 

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