160 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



3. Longer pasture season. 



4. Ready use of new methods. 



5. Educative agencies. 



1 . Cheap Feed. — This advantage is of stupendous im- 

 portance. The low cost for food used in making western 

 butter more than any other one factor makes eastern com- 

 petition increasingly difficult. The western farmer can 

 usually raise a ton of dry matter in silage at less cost than 

 can his eastern brother ; his hay is grown cheaper ; and, as 

 for grain feeds, the comparison is most disheartening. Mill 

 stuffs average throughout the west two-thirds of eastern 

 prices ; corn is so plentiful that it is sometimes cheaper to 

 use as fuel than is coal. Professor Haecker reports the man- 

 ufacture of butter from a large herd at less than 10 cents a 

 pound for food the year round, buying, as he told the writer 

 last month, bran at $4 to $4.50 per tonf. o. b. Minneapolis 

 in car-load lots. The difference in freight rates on a ton of 

 bran and on the butter which a ton of bran will make is lanje. 

 Such a handicap as this is indeed difficult to overcome. 



2. Larger Territory and Numbers. — I think that I have 

 said enough under this head, when considering the statistics 

 given a few minutes ago, to suffice, except perhaps to call 

 attention to the surplus of production over consumption in 

 the west, and the reverse of this condition in New England, 

 and to refer to the fact that the volume of the west's pro- 

 duction gives it a standing in the commercial world not 

 accorded to smaller outputs. 



3. Longer Pasture /Season. — This advantage pertains 

 more particularly to Missouri and Kansas. Two southern 

 central States, Kentucky and Tennessee, are likewise rapidly 

 becoming dairy States in the true sense of the word. The 

 milder climates and the prolongation of outdoor bovine life 

 in their States tends to lower the cost of butter production. 



4. Beady Use of New Methods. — Under this heading 

 and again further along in this paper I shall take occasion to 

 refer to the ultra-conservatism of the New England farmer. 

 The western creamery and factory proprietors or managers, as 

 a class, are far and away ahead of easterners in similar posi- 

 tions, in their study of newer methods and appliances and in 

 adopting the same wherever feasible. For example, the fol- 



