ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 29 



steady demand. The English, especially the poorer classes, are said 

 to be a cheese-eating people. They have been educated to it. Doubt- 

 less at first, through hard necessity, to fill an alimentary requirement 

 caused by a want of flesh beyond their reach. But the habit being 

 formed, its gratification has become a necessity. Hence the absorp- 

 tion of the wonderful quantity of cheese that is annually shipped 

 from our growing surplus. Situated as we are, there is little danger 

 of our being forced to the use of cheese for the want of meat, yet the 

 taste can be very much sharpened by tickling the palate and coaxing 

 the frequent and general use by constant satisfaction. 



Since the commencement of the factory system of making 

 cheese, the use of it in this country, in this very way, has grown to 

 magnificent proportions. It was evidently a goose that was laying 

 golden eggs. But instead of nuturing and encouraging the goose to 

 increase her laying, I fear many of us have gone for the goose as the 

 old story reads — we have stolen her fat for butter and left the eggs 

 tasteless, worthless, saleless, goldless. For two or three years the 

 manufacture of skim cheese has increased to a sad extent ; and what 

 is the outlook ? , 



Just at our sorest pinch, when financial stagnation is pressing 

 us with a heavy hand, our goods are tramps, roving about everywhere 

 begging for a market. A shrug of the shoulders, and the stereotyped 

 phrase of the price current, " Only fine mild cheese at all saleable," 

 and that slow and pulseless, is the polite rejoinder. Shading prices 

 even are received with unmeaning indifi"erence. 



Go and interview for a little while the retailers in this city. 

 Say they — " We have been unable to obtain a respectable article of 

 cheese, and a little goes a great way. No one wants it, and it doesn't 

 pay to keep much." And so it is all over. The president of this 

 society and of the Elgin board of trade — where millions of cheese 

 are annually sold — is compelled to import from outside districts 

 cheese for his own consumption that is fit for his table, his board of 

 trade for the sale of skims being unable to furnish it. 



The fact is, the home consumption, notwithstanding the low 

 price, has fallen off" at least seventy-five per cent., while it ought to 

 have at least twenty -five per cent, increase. This alone would bring 

 to the trade wealth and happiness. More than this, by sending the 

 life-blood of the cheese to the butter-tub, you not only kill the cheese 

 trade but smother the butter trade as well. If with the new year we 

 can with honest money content ourselves, with honest goods as well 

 I can only see fair sailins in the immediate future. 



