222 SELF-HELP NOT PROTECTION 



duce in wliicli proximity gives tliem natural advantages. 

 It is, in fact, peculiarly adapted to the growth of beef, 

 mutton, veal, butter, milk, and pork — ai'ticles in which 

 home markets enjoy a natural monopoly, and the imported 

 value of which annually exceeds 20 millions. It increases 

 the proportion of livestock, and thus assists farmers to 

 consume at home produce which they cannot sell at a 

 profit. Better prices are realised in milk and butter than 

 were made thirty years ago. Prime qualities of English hard 

 cheese maintain their prices ; there is an increasing demand 

 for soft cheese of the Coulommiers type ; buttermilk com- 

 mands a ready sale among confectioners. If half-and-half 

 cheese like Brie, or skim-milk cheese like Gervais, both 

 famous in Paris, command no sale ; if separated milk is 

 not, as in the North, bought to mix with porridge, skim- 

 milk may be used to rear calves and pigs with peculiar 

 advantage. Shorthorns, as is well known, take kindly to 

 rearing by hand ; and the excessive fatness which depre- 

 ciates the price of maize-fed American ' hog-products ' is 

 best counteracted by nitrogenous food, like milk mixed 

 with pea-meal or barley. 



Where markets are convenient, the milk trade is easy 

 and remunerative ; but farmers have hitherto given away 

 their profits to be reaped by middlemen. One of many 

 signs that they are awakening to the importance of the 

 trade is seen in their alliances to determine the prices of 

 the districts. Co-operation in the sale of produce is sorely 

 needed. It is probable that that uniformity which places 

 Normandy at the head of the butter trade can only be 

 secured in factories. If so, let us have them. But it is 

 certain that if English cheese and butter are to compete 

 at all with foreign goods, they must, before all things, be 

 above suspicion for purit3^ In a war of ' wrinkles ' we 



