423] BUTTER PRICES 199 



are also instaling machinery to make ice cream on a large 

 scale and are rapidly succeeding in establishing firmly the 

 habit of eating ice cream throughout rural districts. This 

 innovation offers another form of dairy product into which 

 milk may be converted. While the price of the three 

 dairy products rise and fall at the same time, there is con- 

 siderable difference in the extent of the fluctuation. Milk 

 fluctuates less widely than butter and butter less widely 

 than cheese. This is probably due to the fact that the 

 amount of milk converted into butter and cheese sometimes 

 causes an unequal situation between the supply and the de- 

 mand of these two products. The manufacturer of cheese 

 has considerable difficulty in judging prices because of the 

 length of time required to ripen his product. The butter 

 maker can place his product on the market from week to 

 week or hold it in cold storage for the winter. Relatively 

 there is fixity in the supply of cheese and flexibility in the 

 supply of butter, and it is readily seen therefore why the 

 fluctuations in the annual average price are greater for 

 cheese than for butter. 



To ascertain the causes of the variations in the amount 

 of butter produced from year to year it would be necessary 

 to have exact figures of the number of milch cows and all 

 the amounts of milk, butter, and cheese produced for a series 

 of years. If these figures were available for a limited, but 

 representative area, they would probably show that the aver- 

 age yearly production of butter is largely determined by 

 the price of feed and by the effect of prices upon dairy 

 farming. Dairy farming is of course in competition with 

 other types of farming, and the course of prices of the dif- 

 ferent farm products have probably a very important selec- 

 tive influence as to what type of farming shall be empha- 

 sized from year to year. The number of milch cows given 

 in the Agricultural Yearbook do not change very abruptly, 



