farmers' Boys and Girls. 
413 
There, twenty-fiv'e years ago, those eastern farmers sold their 
cheese for four, six, and eight cents a pound, seldom at the last 
named price; if their butter brought them thirteen or fourteen cents 
a pound, they were quite satisfied, and if by*special contract with 
some hotel in a distant city, they could get sixteen cents — no 
families thought of paying that—they would furnish butter the 
year round at that price'. These same farmers bought their calico 
at sixteen, eighteen and twenty-five cents a yard, and their cotton 
cloth at a shilling, yet they grew rich; farm was added to farm; 
sons went to college, daughters were clothed in the finest fabrics 
the merchants could offer, and to-day these farmers have money at 
interest for future use. Profiting by their experience, we of the 
west may do the same. Here in Wisconsin in our own Outagamie 
county, we have all the conditions of soil, grasses and water, above 
the average for dairying. In every sunny opening in the partially 
cleared fields, the white clover, the sweetest food for the dairy cow, 
comes in unsought, and the fresh green grass comes, “ Creeping, 
creeping everywhere,” in all the gardens and cultivated fields. 
You who have attempted to grow a small strawberry bed under¬ 
stand this perfectly. AYhy not utilize this almost spontaneous 
growth, and turn it into a remedy for the hard times and privations 
of which we complain. Here in our own city, we get more than 
double the price for butter that those eastern farmers did and we buy 
our calico at five, eight and ten cents a yard. Our farmer in this 
county has not sold a pound of butter for some years past for less 
than twenty-eight cents; from that to thirty-five, and it has some¬ 
times been sold for over forty cents. In the iron regions of lake 
Superior, butter has been sold for seventy-five cents a pound. If 
we wish for better prices than we can get at home, doubtless a 
market could be created; with all the different lines of railroad 
running to the mining regions, the pineries, and the cities and 
towns, something could be done in shipping butter to other places. 
A first-class article, of firm grain, fine flavor, and rich color, will 
bring the highest price in any market. This kind can be made here 
as well as elsewhere. 
We speak especially of butter, because that is the beginning of 
dairying. It comes within the reach of the smallest farmers. If it 
pay but little at a time, it comes steadily from week to week with 
the coming wants, and enables the family of limited means to do 
