On Cheese-making in Home Dairies and in Factories. 267 
dairy and the factory be so close that the few shillings a week 
which are thus involved will turn the scale, there can be no 
chance of a factory succeeding. As a matter of fact, this ad- 
ditional labour does not hinder milk being sent to factories from 
farms four miles off. This is the case, I believe, both at Lichfield 
and at Longford. The cost is diminished in some cases by one 
of the more distant senders undertaking to pick up the milk of 
other contributors on his way, one horse and one lad being thus 
engaged for all, instead of one for each. The cost is thus at 
once distributed and diminished ; but the principal alleviation, 
and practically the annihilation of this expense will only be 
attained when factories are multiplied sufficiently. The land 
within the radius of a mile exceeds 2000 acres, an area which, 
in a dairy district, may contain at least 600 milking cows, quite 
enough to justify a factory, which need not thus be farther than 
a mile from any of its contributors. 
One would not, however, lightly consider an objection to 
the increase of labour on our dairy-farms, for it must be re- 
membered that the milking of the cows always prescribes a very 
considerable minimum ; and there must, in any case, always be 
hands enough to accomplish this. If on\y this process could be 
accomplished by machinery, there would at once be a greater 
readiness to acquiesce in any proposal for lessening the other 
necessary labour on such farms. Surely the process is not beyond 
the limits of artificial contrivance. If by offering even the 
largest prize for which they have any precedent, the Royal 
Agricultural Society could obtain a thoroughly efficient artificial 
cow-milker, it would make a most advantageous use of its 
funds — rendering an immense service to all dairy-farmers, and 
making them readier to unite for the further economy of labour 
which the factory system enables. 
The Advantages of the Factory System. 
Some of the advantages which are claimed for the Factory 
system of cheese-making have been already gathered from this 
discussion of the objections which have been made to it. 
(L) The importance, just alluded to, of putting the manu- 
facture in the hands of the cleverest makers, places this among the 
chief of them. The milk of 20 to 30 dairies, manipulated with 
all the aid of the best apparatus, by the cleverest of the 20 or 30 
dairymaids through whose hands, in generally poorly equipped 
dairies, it has hitherto passed, is certain to result in a higher 
quality and consequently greater value of cheese upon the whole. 
To this agrees the report of the cheese-market ever since the 
Derbyshire cheese-factories have been established ; and we may 
