ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IX 469 



show that they have collected many hundred dollars to defray the 

 expense of speakers at dairy meeting's and pay State Dairy Expert 

 VanPelt his extra salary, should make it comparatively easy to get 

 this appropriation renewed. I would recommend that this be made 

 an annual appropriation of not less than $7,000 and that the law be 

 amended to make the State Dairy Expert's salary $2,000. It would 

 be well enough to put the $1,500 limit on the assistants, but a 

 strictly highclass man like Prof. Van Pelt cannot be secured at 

 less than $2,000, and it is too much of a tax on our dairy friends to 

 ask them to donate the $500 a year, as they have been obliged to 

 do for the last two years. Our legislature should remember that 

 the cost of living has materially increased in the last few years, 

 and that when they go on the market for help they come in compe- 

 tion with commercial institutions that are willing to pay a salary 

 commensurate with the service rendered. 



THE VALUE OF DAIRY PRODUCTS. 



The public has criticised the dairy farmer on account of the ad- 

 vanced price of dairy products. When the cost of producing a 

 pound of butter or a gallon of milk is compared with the same ten 

 years ago, this criticism is entirely unfounded. 



A recent government bulletin gives the cost of maintenance of a 

 cow for a year as a little more than double that of ten years ago. 

 When you take into consideration the value of land, the cost of 

 buildings, labor and the various things that must be counted, we 

 are not surprised at this conclusion. Feed has more than doubled 

 in value. Going a little further back — say twenty or twenty-five 

 years — the best of bran sold for $4.00 per ton and the finest of 

 clover hay for $3.50 per ton. Is it not fair to say that if milk sold 

 at five cents per quart at that time, good milk should bring ten 

 cents per quart now. If it were understood by the housewives and 

 the people generally that a quart of four per cent, milk contained 

 more body supporting food than three-fourths of a pound of the 

 best beefsteak and as much as eight average eggs, the sale of milk 

 would be doubled. Beefsteak costs from twenty to twenty-five 

 cents per pound and the dairy people should be more diligent than 

 they have been in educating the public along these lines. Milk is 

 the most nearly perfect of all foods, as it contains in an easily di- 



