COMBINATION AMONG FARMERS. 103 



have but few small farms. . . . Where small holdings exist, 

 with the female labour always present in the shape of a wife or 

 a daughter, there butter is nearly always made. On my own 

 property I have made many such holdings, and the small 

 tenants all produce butter, and I believe they make it pay to 

 do so. The dairy enables them to keep pigs, and the woman's 

 time is given up to the dairy, the pigs, the poultry, and the 

 calves. We have no factory within reach. The necessary 

 condition of having as many as 400 cows within easy reach 

 could not be fulfilled on my estate, but we do not want a 

 factory. We make our butter on the old scalding process, and 

 whether the quality is better than the French or not, I know 

 not, but I do know that although we sell it at home, and thus 

 have no expense of carriage, we make a better price than good 

 foreign butter is worth in London wholesale, taking the year 

 round. Before coming here I took out the prices I had made 

 for butter during the last twelve months, and I found that I 

 had made over 13^. per lb. for all I had to sell. I am aware 

 of all the complaints that are made about us, namely, that no 

 butter dealer in London would take the make of half-a-dozen 

 farms in Devon and Cornwall all the year round on account of 

 its varying in colour and quality. We really do not care 

 whether the Londoner takes it or not. We should probably 

 lose 2d. per lb. by sending it to him. There are people nearer 

 home who know the flavour of well-made English grass butter, 

 and they take all we have to spare. Butter made on the 

 scalding process, whether a separator be used or not is, more- 

 over, much wholesomer, in my opinion, than that made by any 

 other process, and I expect we shall hold our price. If we 

 adopted the advice of the Press, and sent all the butter after it 

 is made to a factory to be made into one uniform quality and 

 shape, I fail to see how we could do any better than the 

 Frenchman, the Dane, or the Irishman. ... I think I have 

 shown that the conditions under which we farm are so different 

 to those of the Danes, the French, and the Irish, that we do 

 very wisely to choose not to make butter in any large quantity. 



Let us therefore disabuse our minds of the notion 

 that universal butter-making is a necessary, or desirable, 

 consequence of co-operation as applied to agriculture. 

 Butter-making is a mere branch, and not perhaps the 

 most important branch, of a wide subject. 



If, as I venture to think, the popular advocacy of co- 

 operation for farmers is founded, to some extent at least, 

 on misconception, the opposition of farmers to the idea 



