58 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



Specially unfavourable seasons, such as the drought of 

 1893, ^"*^ the cold summer of 1892. 



Dairy Produce. 



But even in the direction where most hope is felt 

 of successful re-adjustment, in dairy products, there has 

 been recently a striking fall of values. 



The price of butter usually regulates the price of milk, 

 and the enormous importations of cheap butter from the 

 colonies, as well as from Denmark and France, has 

 lowered the price of milk as well as of butter. 



Mr Drew, in Galloway, says, " We make the very best 

 butter. We have the largest creameries in the country, 

 but the fall in butter has been so great," that the cream- 

 eries can " only offer 46. a gallon for milk, and it has also 

 to bear the cost of transport." 



Some witnesses put the fall in dairy products at from 

 10 to 25 per cent. 



In Sir Robert Giffen's tables dairy products in 1891 

 are estimated at ;^35,ooo,ooo, while at the prices of 1874 

 the same quantities of milk, butter, and cheese would 

 have been worth iJ"5 2, 500,000, a fall of 33 per cent. 



Mr Finney and Mr Osborne, of the Derbyshire Dairy 

 Farming Association, state that cheese has gone down 

 from 60s to 80s to 40s to 50s, butter from is 2d summer, 

 and IS lod winter price, to about 9d or lod and is 4d. 



In Dorsetshire, where the larger farmers usually let 

 their cows to dairymen, dairies are now let at £2 to £^ 

 less per cow than ten or twelve years ago, a rough 

 measure of the fall. 



The fall in the price of potatoes from £4. and ;^5 

 a ton down to 35 s, and even 30s a ton, has caused 

 heavy losses in many districts. On farms in the Lothians, 

 Mr Hope has estimated the crop at about 8 tons an acre, 

 though it is frequently much heavier. Taking that esti- 

 mate, the value of the crop per acre in 1874 was nearly 

 ^40, in 1895 between ^12 and ;^i8. 



