ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 33 



ket. You will not keep it to yourself, and many a good market has been given 

 away to some less enterprising competitor. 



Do not ask the Legislature to pass a law like the "Wood bill" especially for 

 us. We may not be better than other men, but we are no worse. It may seem 

 paradoxical, but it is true. There can be too many factories in a given territory. 

 No creamery man will enforce necessary rules about the can of milk or cream 

 among his patrons as long as his competitor holds out a standing invitation to 

 him to change. The utmost confidence should exist between manufacturer and 

 patron ; both working for the same end, one cannot succeed without the aid of 

 the other. 



What I have said about butter applies with equal force to cheese. Only a 

 few years ago the Elgin factories began to skim. An effort was made to 

 see who could get the most butter. Until with the aid of the separators the 

 skims are absolutely dangerous for food and are a drug in the market. While 

 the production has increased but little, the demand has fallen off beyond all ex- 

 pectation, and the cheese market for a year has been flat. People have lost 

 confidence in cheese. The remedy, then, is to aim high, even at perfection, in 

 butter and cheese-making. Make your goods of so high a grade that they cannot 

 be counterfeited. I hope to live to see the day when, throughout this grandest 

 dairy belt in the world, instead of straw stacks, fenced with worthless hatracks 

 — mere imitations of the bovine race — comfortable barns, flanked with herds of 

 gentle, trusting, loving specimens of our native milkers, will abound. 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Dexter : What is the lowest price of what you call good butter that 

 you have known ? 



Answer. I think the- lowest price I ever sold butter at was 14^ cents; 

 that was one week several years ago, in 1879. 



Question. I mean the average production of the season? 



Answer. I can not tell you. I should say somewhere between 25 and 28 cents. 



Mr. Dexter: I have some figures here, which I will read: "Professor 

 William Brown, of the Ontario Agricultural College, has been carrying on ex- 

 periments for determining the food cost of milk, butter and cheese, both in 

 summer and in winter, and he finds that with the common Ontario and Short- 

 horn grade cows, yielding 3,500 pounds of milk a year, the food cost in summer 

 is 3 cents per gallon. This allows for three acres of ordinary cultivated hay 

 pasture, the grass upon which is worth to the farmer $10.00 per season of six 

 months. With a better pasture capable of keeping two cows upon three acres, 

 the food cost of the milk may be reduced to 2 cents per gallon. In winter, with 

 a daily allowance of 12 pounds of hay, 30 pounds of turnips or mangolds, 

 3 pounds of bran and 2 pounds of crushed oats, costing in the market 15 cents, 

 but, to the farmer who grows it, not over 8 cents, the cost of milk with cows 

 giving 25 pounds per day will be only 4^ cents per gallon. On this basis for 

 the cost of the milk, a pound of butter in winter will cost for food consumed, 

 1% cents, and in summer, with ordinary pasture, 5 cents; but, with the best of 

 pasture, 2 cents per pound. The cost of cheese in summer from milk made by 

 cows feeding in ordinary pasture is placed at 2 cents per pound." 



