10 ILLINOIS 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 ot 
it bringing the former, price. Sweeden also exported a large amount ot 
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 t e 
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 m 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 o 
labor as connected with human development and genuine happiness; at 
the same time giving them that book education which will fit them to ma e 
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 bvgone when the farmer boy was taught to plant his tubers in 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- 
