BUTTER-MAKING OR MILK-SELLING 9 



in the supply of which to the large towns the British 

 farmer could have a monopoly. 



The fact, I might here remark, that British dairy 

 farmers have allowed the trade in butter to get so much 

 into the hands of colonists and foreigners has often 

 been held up as a reproach to them. But the reply 

 they make is that, where their farms are wdthin easy 

 reach of a railway and of a large centre of population, 

 it pays them better to sell the new milk than to turn it 

 into butter, the latter course being expedient only 

 when the farm is at too great a distance from a railway 

 or a large town ; or, alternatively, when there is an excess 

 in supply over demand, butter-making then becoming 

 (among other expedients) a convenient means of using 

 up the surplus. 



The general position, from the farmer's point of view, 

 is well stated in the following paragraph, published in 

 The Dairy World under the heading * Butter-making or 

 Milk-selling': 



The lament is periodically made in the daily papers that such a 

 vast sum of money as ,27,000,000 should be annually expended in 

 the purchase of dairy produce from abroad, and Lord Londonderry 

 has recently taken up the parable and expressed the opinion that 

 farmers' wives and daughters should take the matter seriously into 

 their consideration. The question, after all, resolves itself into one 

 of price. When a dairy farmer can, by selling fresh milk, get from 

 is. 4d. to is. lod. according to season for the quantity that 

 would be required to make a pound of butter, he is not likely, 

 neither is his wife nor his daughter, to take into serious considera- 

 tion the alternative of making butter to compete with produce 

 which is quoted on the market at from lod. to is. id. per pound. 

 In some cases where a special market is obtained, and the facilities 

 for sending milk to a large centre are not favourable, the making 

 of butter of a high quality can be carried on to advantage ; but the 

 instances where such butter can command as high a price as is. 6d. 

 per pound are very exceptional, and the possibilities of the exten- 

 sion of such trade so slight that no appreciable effect on the im- 

 ported produce could result. The conditions in Ireland are, of 

 course, different to those in Great Britain, but it is certain that to 



