ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 31 
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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 
