10 ILLIJS^OIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



pounds of butter and 93,475,659 pounds of cheese. The exportation of 

 cheese from Holland for same time was 60,000,000 pounds. 



Denmark may be counted a strong competitor of ours ; for the English 

 market in 1873 she exported to England 42,526,484 pounds of butter, 

 which is reported as having been sold in that market at fifty cents per pound, 

 while for the same year the United States only exported 4,000,000 pounds? 

 which was sold in that market at twenty-five to thirty-five cents, most of 

 it bringing the former price. Sweeden also exported a large amount of 

 butter which brought in the English market about thirty-five cents per 

 pound. 



Now, in reflecting upon what has been said in the foregoing statements, 

 we are forced to the conclusion that either we do not make as good butter 

 as our foreign neighbors or else our best butter does not reach the export 

 trade. Let this be as it may, we are fully satisfied it should receive our 

 careful attention as dairymen of Illinois. 



No doubt a home market is the best when sufficiently active to take and 

 consume the entire production of the country. At the present time ours 

 is not such a market. Therefore, it becomes us, as producers, to look 

 carefully to the export trade for the disposal of our surplus. 



The dairy business is, annually, largely on the increase in this country. 

 Butter and cheese is being made, and that too of good quality, in sections 

 of our country where it had been supposed, in years bygone, to be imprac- 

 ticable to do anything of the kind. Some weeks ago we clipped from the 

 Prairie Farmer (a paper published in Chicago, of much interest to the 

 dairyman and farmer, if carefully read,) the following, which bears directly 

 upon this point : " A colony of Swiss have settled on the Cumberland 

 mountains, in Tennessee, who have dairies and cheese factories in successful 

 operation ; their products commanding ready sale and fancy prices." 



Now, in conclusion, you will please allow me to say that we fully believe 

 that every dairyman or farmer should consider it a duty that he owes to his 

 sons, and daughters also, to educate them to understand the principles of 

 labor as connected wich human development and genuine happiness ; at 

 the same time giving them that book education which will fit them to make 

 the best application of such labor, and also to prepare them to fill high and 

 honorable positions in the social relations of life. We are fully aware that 

 in» times bygone when the farmer boy was taught to plant his tubers ih a 

 certain phase of the moon and his cereals in another, that book education 

 was considered by some, perhaps many, as a dangerous thing for a farmer. 

 Thank fortune, those days are rapidly passing, or have already, meas- 



