164 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



three fundamentals, to study, if you will, three courses in 

 the school of dairy experience : — 



1. Economy of manufacture. 



2. Markets. 



3. The dairy business as a whole. 



I freely grant that this triad is not stated in a logical 

 order ; that, in putting the dairy business last, I seem to 

 have placed the horse after the cart. Yet I wished to make 

 this distinction between headings 1 and 3, for reasons which 

 will be apparent as the discussion develops. 



1. Economy of Manufacture. — Under this heading one 

 needs to consider means of economizing, either by lessening 

 cost or improving plant. I have divided the matter, for con- 

 venience and clearness of discussion, under five sub-heads : — 



(a) Machines. 



(b) Crude stock. 



(c) Methods. 



(cZ) Nature of products. 



(e) Character of products. 



(a) Economy in Machines (i. e., cows, dairy apparatus, 

 etc. ) . — Some dairy authorities have been prone to look 

 upon the cow as a machine, to speak of the food as fuel to 

 run the engine and of the milk as the product of machine 

 work. This view is one-sided, and in many ways ill-con- 

 ceived. Yet, for the purposes of the present argument and 

 classification, the cow may well be considered as a part of 

 the dairyman's plant or machinery for manufacturing finished 

 products. I have already said that New England dairy cows 

 average better, that is to say, produce more, than do western 

 cows. So far, so good; but better is not best. When the 

 odds are so heavily against us, every effort needs be made ; 

 and here endeavor is readily directed. Let us turn for a 

 moment to Vermont statistics. Some years ago Hon. Victor 

 I. Spear, then statistical secretary of the State Board of 

 Agriculture, gathered data in the course of his official work 

 showing the average butter production per cow in that dairy 

 State. The result showed the average annual yield to be 156 

 pounds per cow, several entire townships being over the 

 200-pound mark and some below the 100-pound limit. The 

 range of production was from 92 to 259 pounds for entire 



