232 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



were producing more butter than we could consume at home. 

 We expected that we must either export butter or some of our 

 dairymen would have to go out of the business. 



The question of our export outlook for our butter is one 

 which has justly been attracting considerable attention of 

 late; yet, it is one for which we find no really satisfactory solu- 

 tion. With us the problem is a complicated one; we are a 

 heavy consuming nation; a ver^^ slight variation in supplies 

 makes a scarcity in our markets, so small is our surplus when 

 compared with our gross production. Yet, we feel that our 

 surplus should be exported, and that we ought to build up a 

 regular trade. This season's exports have been almost double 

 those of a year ago, 298,000, against 160,000, and yet to an ad- 

 vocate of the export business, it has not been satisfactory. We 

 have not exported our butter on its merits, but because certain 

 countries had to have something, and we appeared to be the 

 only nation that had a surplus. The quality of our butter is 

 not such now as a rule that the exporters want it, but, as I 

 said before, they take it, because thy cannot get anything else, 

 and yet I think we are gradually drifting towards a quality 

 that we can export. As has been said here we are constantly 

 coming in conflict with home consumption when we attempt 

 to export butter. For instance, our local or domestic trade 

 does not want boxes; the export trade does want boxes. If 

 we make up butter for the export trade, and the demand does 

 not happen to be such that it will be taken at a price that 

 will be on an equality with our domestic markets, then there 

 is dissatisfaction and the boxes must be unloaded, as a rule, at 

 a lower price than the tub butter would be. So you see that 

 if there is the slightest variation in the demand for butter to 

 go abroad and we have butter made up to go abroad, we have 

 got to sell at a loss. You take, for instance, the Canadians; 

 they have made a great deal more progress in the exporting 

 of butter than we in the last few years, and for this reason: 

 The Canadians are very small consumers compared with the 

 United States. They have gone into the export business as 

 a business; their butter is made for the export business largely, 

 they make it with the view of selling it abroad and make 

 the home consumers take that butter; the home consumers 

 have got to take it, whether they like it or not; colored and 



