31 



is somewhat depressed. The area in which it is pursued as a prominent 

 feature has been vastly enlarged ; the present demand for dairy products 

 has been nearly, at times fully, supplied. The margin of profit on butter 

 and cheese has often been small, and considerable quantities have been sold 

 for less than cost of production. There has been less of complaint among 

 western dairymen than among any other considerable class of western 

 farmers, but there has, of late, been some talk of over-production, of 

 unequal distribution of profits, etc 



Turning from the past and the present to the future, I can but believe 

 that our dairy interests are not again to enjoy an equal prosperity with that 

 of the most favored part of the past. It is to share in the changing condi- 

 tions which have come and are coming to all American agriculture. We 

 have been living in wonderfully favorable conditions — perhaps more so, in 

 regard to accumulation of wealth, than any other great people ever enjoyed. 

 To succeed at least reasonably well, to commence with little or nothing and, 

 by middle or old age, to accumulate a^ fair competence, has been the rule 

 rather than the exception with our farmers,. The peasantry of other lands, 

 with little training, little skill, little money, ignorant of our language, our 

 modes of farming, even these have made success the rule and failure the 

 exception. In other countries this has not been so. The hard times of 

 which we now complain are not peculiar to farming nor to America. Other 

 callings equally suffer, and many much more severely ; other countries feel 

 the financial depression even to a greater degree. The British farmer is in 

 worse plight than is the American. With a denser population, with closer 

 competition, the struggle for success will, to many, be changed to a struggle 

 for life. Dairy profits will not be so large in the future as they have some- 

 times been in the past. 



There is now no monopoly of territory in which dairying may be 

 pursued under reasonably favorable natural conditions. The time was when 

 only a narrow belt of country was believed fitted for the dairy, and this did 

 not extend, at most, beyond Ohio. Common sense and enterprise proved 

 that much of the Northwest was admirably adapted for successful dairying, 

 and now we must admit that good butter and good cheese can be, have 

 been, and are being produced much further South and West than we once 

 thought possible. Some regions are better than others, but wherever good 

 grass grows, good water can be found and there is a climate not injurious 

 to man or cow, there no insurmountable obstacle to dairying exists. 



There is now no monopoly of the knowledge requisite to com- 

 mencing in dairying. Thanks, largely, to the published proceedings of 



