MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE. 53 



sio qualities of our stock has been going on, the number of 

 neat-cattle iu the country has largely increased. The aggre- 

 gate number by the census of 1840 was 14,971,586 ; in 1850 

 it was 18,378,907 ; while by the census of 1870 we find 23,- 

 820,608. Of these there were about 9,000,000 cows. It 

 will be seen that the amount invested in this class of live- 

 stock alone cannot be less than $300,000,000, the total value 

 of the live-stock of the country being officially reported as 

 $1,525,276,457. 



THE DAIEY INTEREST. 



It would be interesting to study the form in which the 

 product, or, in other words, the profit of the vast amount of 

 capital invested in neat-stock appears in different parts of the 

 country. Space will admit of only a brief allusion to this 

 point, but it is evident that throughout the Northern and Mid- 

 dle States it will appear very largely in the form of dairy 

 products, while in the West we shall find it more generally in 

 the form of slaughtered animals. Among the dairy products 

 we find by the last census that we sold, 235,500,599 gallons 

 of milk in its natural form. It went chiefly to supply our 

 large towns and cities ; the figures not representing the vast 

 amount consumed at home, and thus contributing so much to 

 the comforts and the necessities of life. At the same time 

 we produced 514,092,683 pounds of butter and 53,492,153 

 pounds of cheese. These figures, large as they are, do not 

 represent anything like the production of the country. The 

 value of butter made in New York alone in the year 1865 ex- 

 ceeded $60,000,000. It is j)robable that the cheese made in 

 factories, now numbering something like fifteen hundred, was 

 returned under some other head, and that the 53,000,000 is 

 the amount supposed to have been made in private dairies, 

 for we know that the quantity of cheese made in New York 

 State in 1864 for sale, in addition to that consumed on the 

 farm, was nearly 72,200,000 pounds, while the product there, 

 as in all the other Northern States, has been rapidly pro- 

 gressing since that date, owing to the constant expansion of 

 the factory system and the stimulus of high prices. It is 

 quite Avithin bounds to say that the butter product of the 



