No. 4.] COMPETITION AND THE FARMER. 411 



chusetts farmers may hope to hold within their grasp ; the 

 laws for its production may therefore well be studied and 

 restudied. The choice and breeding of our milch cows, the 

 feeding, care and handling of these delicate machines, 

 though old and oft-discussed subjects, demand increasing 

 intelligence and stricter business methods upon the part ot 

 our dairymen. Civil laws have been enacted to protect the 

 interest of both the producer and the consumer of milk ; 

 now let the natural laws that lie about its cheap production 

 receive our closest attention. 



Let us next consider the butter product. The figures of 

 its production indicate growth, but by no means a healthy 

 development. In 1845 we produced 7,668,556 pounds, in 

 1885 9,685,539,— again of 26 per cent. That which has 

 been considered by many its greatest enemy has by legal 

 enactment been locked behind the bars. Doubtless oleo- 

 margarine should be relegated to its own merits, if it has 

 any. Let the energy and thought used to compass its 

 restriction now be turned upon the best methods to produce 

 gilt-edged butter at the least possible cost ; for, while oleo- 

 margarine has occupied our thought, legitimate competitors 

 have been securing our market. This sharpshooter has 

 engaged our attention while the sappers and miners have 

 been stealthily undermining our camp. 



Ex-Governor Hoard, in his practical, pungent exhortations 

 to Eastern farmers, is hailing the advent of twenty cents 

 a pound for first-quality creamery butter ; thus his wish is 

 but an expression of his prophecy. Coming, as it does, 

 from the editor of one of our ablest and most widely circu- 

 lated dairy papers, it forcibly and irresistibly thrusts upon 

 our notice the coil of competition that is being gradually 

 girded about the butter industry of New England by the 

 vast dairy possibilities of the West. Are we to be strangled ? 

 that is the vital question. We have already attended the 

 obsequies of the cheese industry ; is another funeral soon to 

 be solemnized? In 1885 we made 972,211 pounds of 

 cheese; in 1845, 7,262,637 pounds. Who at that time 

 would have predicted a decline of 86 per cent in but forty 

 years in this industry ? The cheese vat was then to be found 

 in every dairy house ; now it is a thing of the past. This 



