852 OLEOMARGARINE. 



Along this line Secretary Wilson says, on page 415: 



The dairy cow is the most valuable agent of the producer, and her milk is one of 

 nature's perfect rations. She gives profitable employment to all who care for her or 

 her products. She gathers her food from the fields without intervening help in 

 summer, and turns cheap forage into high selling products in winter. The grasses 

 that grow for her in her pasture return humus to worn-out lands, enabling them to 

 retain moisture and resist droughts, in addition to inviting nitrogen from the atmos- 

 phere through the agency of the legumes upon which she grazes. She is the mother 

 of the steer that manufactures beef from grasses, grains, and the by-products of the 

 mills. 



* >****** 



The farmer who keeps a herd of dairy cows returns through the herd to the soil 

 all the crops he gathers from it, except the products of skill that take little plant 

 food from the soil. The lint of cotton and the fine flour of wheat are among our 

 leading exports, and take little from the soil; the fats of the cow and the plants take 

 nothing whatever. The cow and her calf are prime necessities in reclaiming worn- 

 out land. The cotton-growing States that have reduced fertility by too much crop- 

 ping can bring back the strength of the soil by growing the grazing plants and feed- 

 ing the meal of cotton-seed to the dairy cow and her calf, but the farmers of no part 

 of our country can afford to keep cows for the sole purpose of raising calves, except 

 free commoners on the public domains, whose privileges are being contracted to 

 such an extent by injudicious grazing that every year fewer cattle are found on the 

 ranges of the semiarid States. 



The meats to feed our people in future must come, in large measure, from the high- 

 priced farms east of the one hundredth meridian of west longitude. The feeding steers 

 will be bred on those farms from the dairy cows that are now and will become more 

 and more a necessity. 



Hon. John Hamilton, secretary of agriculture for Pennsylvania, 

 is reported as follows, on pages 157 and 158: 



Careful examination should be made into the effect which this will have upon the 

 dairy industry of the Commonwealth, which has now become one of the leading and 

 most profitable branches of our agriculture. If, upon examination, it is found that 

 oleomargarine will to any considerable degree drive out the dairy interests from the 

 markets of the Commonwealth, it would seem to be only wise public policy to first 

 make sure that the industry that is to replace this branch of our agriculture shall do 

 more for the Commonwealth in the way of substantial and permanent support than 

 the important occupation that it proposes to supplant. 



The admitting of oleomargarine in competition with the dairy products of the State 

 endangers a great industry that is now a part of our system of agriculture more widely 

 distributed than any other. We have now about 1,100,000 cows in Pennsylvania. 

 Their product is about 90,000,000 to 100,000,000 pounds of butter per year, and 

 according to the census of 1890 the milk product was 437,525,349 gallons. These 

 cows are distributed among 211,412 farmers' families, consisting of over 1,000,000 

 persons, or about one-fifth of our entire population. The income of the farming 

 people of Pennsylvania last year from butter alone amounted to between eighteen 

 and twenty millions of dollars; and the milk product, at 8 cents per gallon, amounted 

 to $35,000,000 more. This vast sum is a new product each year, adding this much to 

 the actual wealth of the State, and is distributed all through the Commonwealth, 

 going to the support of overl,000,000 people, enabling them to maintain themselves in 

 comparative comfort. The loss of such a sum as this by the agricultural people of 

 the State would be a calamity, particularly because much of the material that is 

 used in the feeding of these dairy cows would, if the industry were destroyed, be 

 left on the farmers' hands valueless. 



And on page 134 will be found the following from Hon. G. L. Flan- 

 ders, assistant commissioner of agriculture of New York State: 



Do you know that in the great State of New York there are 1,600,000 cows? Do 

 you know we have 250,000 persons engaged in farm work? And yet you seek to come 

 into our market and drive us out and ruin that industry. Is there anything fair about 

 that? We ask you to stand up like men and sell your commodity for what it is. Then 

 if you can compete with us we will stand it like men. Not many years ago we were in 

 the meat market. We raised cattle in New York and sold them for meat. We sold 

 cereals. The Genesee and Rochester valleys were great wheat fields. Then the wheat 



