ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
2 9 
steady demand. The English, especially the poorer classes, are said 
to be a cheese-eating people. They have been educated to it. Doubt¬ 
less at first, through hard necessity, to fill an alimentary requirement 
caused by a want of flesh beyond their reach. But the habit being 
formed, its gratification has become a necessity. Hence the absorp¬ 
tion of the wonderful quantity of cheese that is annually shipped 
from our growing surplus. Situated as we are, there is little danger 
of our being forced to the use of cheese for the want of meat, yet the 
taste can be very much sharpened by tickling the palate and coaxing 
the frequent and general use by constant satisfaction. 
Since the commencement of the factory system of making 
cheese, the use of it in this country, in this very way, has grown to 
magnificent proportions. It was evidently a goose that was laving 
golden eggs. But instead of nuturing and encouraging the goose to 
increase her laying, I fear many of us have gone for the goose as the 
old story reads—we have stolen her fat for butter and left the eggs 
tasteless, worthless, saleless, goldless. For two or three years the 
manufacture of skim cheese has increased to a sad extent; and what 
is the outlook ? 
Just at our sorest pinch, when financial stagnation is pressing 
us "with a heavy hand, our goods are tramps, roving about everywhere 
begging for a market. A shrug of the shoulders, and the stereotyped 
phrase of the price current, “ Only fine mild cheese at all saleable,” 
and that slow and pulseless, is the polite rejoinder. Shading prices 
even are received with unmeaning indifference. 
Go and interview for a little while the retailers in this city. 
Say they “We have been unable to obtain a respectable article of 
cheese, and a little goes a great way. No one wants it, and it doesn’t 
pay to keep much.” And so it is all over. The president of this 
society and of the Elgin board of trade—where millions of cheese 
are annually sold is compelled to import from outside districts 
cheese for his own consumption that is fit for his table, his board of 
trade for the sale of skims being unable to furnish it. 
The fact is, the home consumption, notwithstanding the low 
price, has fallen off at least seventy-five per cent., while it ought to 
have at least twenty-five per cent, increase. This alone would bring 
to the trade wealth and happiness. More than this, by sending the 
life-blood of the cheese to the butter-tub, you not only kill the cheese 
trade but smother the butter trade as well. If with the new year we 
can with honest money content ourselves, with honest goods as well 
I can only see fair sailing in the immediate future. 
