STOCK-HUSBANDRY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 189 



needed for keeping up a continuous, thrifty growth. The 

 mature milking stock I woukl feed mostly at the stables, 

 giving green or dry fodders grown especially for the 

 purpose. 



I cannot believe that a piece of good tillage land onco 

 made rich cannot be kept so permanently by returning to it 

 all the manure made from butter cows consuming the crops 

 grown upon it. If more is needed, it will be a little bone, to 

 offset the loss from the sale of the few animals that tft-e fat- 

 tened upon dairy farms. The sale of butter takes practi- 

 cally nothing from the soil to make it poorer, and, so long as 

 INIassachusetts goes outside of her own borders for five-sixths 

 of all the butter required for her consumption and trade, there 

 would seem to be no grounds for fears of over-doing the busi- 

 ness of butter-making. 



It is certainly to be lamented that our Massachusetts farm- 

 ers do not more fully appreciate 'the advantage they have 

 in their home markets. In Ohio I saw, last summer, a coun- 

 try storekeeper taking in butter from the farmers in the 

 vicinity, and paying for it in goods at prices ranging from 

 five to ten per cent, higher than the same class of goods were 

 selling for in the vicinity of Boston, or in Massachusetts gen- 

 erally. And what do you think he was paying for that butter ? 

 Fourteen cents a pound for ordinary, and fifteen for the best ! 

 Is western competition of that sort going to seriously injure 

 the Massachusetts dairyman's butter-market? And yet, that 

 butter was made in a nei£i:hl)orhood where farms are held at 

 a hundred dollars or more per acre. 



The competition to be feared is the competition brought 

 against us by the best farmers, w^herever they may be found. 

 There is nothing whatever in the way of farming just as well 

 here in Massachusetts as anywhere at the West. As a mat- 

 ter of fact our farmers in Massachusetts and in New England 

 generally, as badly as we work our land, are excelling the 

 western farmer in nearly every department. According to 

 the census returns the agricultural statistics of Massachu- 

 setts, Kentucky and Ohio stand thus : — 



