No. 4.] NEW ENGLAND DAIRYING. 163 



ization and freezing do, when \vc think of what liquid air 

 has done and may yet do in economic fields, surely it is far 

 from safe for us to assume that the great west will not 

 before long be placing frozen bricks of milk and cream, 

 pasteurized cream, sterilized condensed milk and the like in 

 New England markets, on an equal footing with home-made 

 products. 



Let us now balance accounts. Against the cheaper food, 

 larger area and numbers, and modern methods of the bustling 

 west may be placed a somewhat better grade of eastern 

 cattle and a milk and cream trade thus far not threatened by 

 competition. The candid observer must confess that the 

 west has the best of it. The difficulty of competing witli 

 the cheaply made butter of the west is yearly increasing. 

 No protective tariff can avail ; legislation is to be invoked to 

 no purpose. The business conditions of the present day 

 are very different from those of our forefathers, and will so 

 remain. It is folly to bemoan the high prices of former 

 days, useless to combat modern business conditions with 

 out-of-date methods or ancient prejudices. I know of no 

 easy way to success, no royal road to competency, no sure 

 cure for the ills of this dangerous competition. The sole 

 resource of eastern dairymen lies in the awakening of their 

 own energies. They may most surely stem the tide of 

 western rivalry by a thorough study of the dairy business, 

 by the application of business methods to their vocation, by 

 the adoption of such western ideas as seem applicable to 

 eastern conditions. 



The dairyman of to-day, to be successful, must work with 

 his head quite as much as with his hands. He must call 

 upon his brain as well as upon his muscle. He may well 

 recollect the remark of one of the famous painters of the 

 last generation, whose coloring was the despair of his fellow 

 artists, who, when asked with what he mixed his paints to 

 produce such wonderful effects, replied, " With brains." 



III. HOW TO MEET "WESTERN* COMPETITION. 



In my judgment, those engaged in dairy husbandry in 

 New England, in order to hold their local markets against 

 the rapid inroads of western competition, need to consider 



