W isc on sin State Agricultural Society. 469 
ductions or markets of wheat seldom redound to the advantage of 
the producer; as the advance in price is chiefly secured by the car¬ 
riers or speculators. The market for cheese and butter is steady 
and enlarging, while the supply or production can be generally regu¬ 
lated by the farmers, and is not likely to exceed the demand. The 
soil is impaired by continuous crops of grain; while the dairyman’s 
farm can be kept in a high state of fertility. Cows convert the 
crops into milk; and the farmers manufacture the milk into 
cheese and butter, which command the cash at remunerative prices. 
The dairy almost turns the farmer into a manufacturer. 
He will, perhaps, have no occasion to adopt the remark of the 
witty Milesian, who, while engaged in carrying hods of brick up a 
ladder to the sixth story of a building, congratulated himself that 
the mason at the top of the wall had to do all the work; but it is 
nevertheless true, that dairymen can boast that their cows do 
an important part of the farm work. Western farmers must eman¬ 
cipate themselves from the slavery in which they are bound by the 
transportation monopolies, so long as bulky grain freights exceed 
the capacity of facilities supplied by the carriers. Compactness in¬ 
to the smallest space, and value of the greatest degree must be the 
points aimed at by western farmers. Instead of raising farm pro¬ 
ducts that are so bulky and cheap that the carriers demand and 
take every third bushel of grain for transporting them to remote 
markets of the East and Europe, it is obviously better to send pro¬ 
ducts to market that will not require more than one-twentieth of 
the shipment to defray transportation, provided there is any surplus 
after the home markets are supplied. It is not an unusul thing to 
see products of eastern dairies brought West. This sort of logic 
will soon have its effect upon the hard-heads who now insist upon 
dividing the products of the farm, so that the producers get the toll 
and the middle-men get the grist. Land servitude or compulsory 
work in the soil with poor remuneration is what the carriers and 
middle-men mean, when they say to the farmers of the West, 
“Raise wheat, and let us carry it to market and exchange it for 
eastern or foreign merchandise.” The farmer who gets the products 
of his farm into the greatest value and least bulk has become a free 
man; and he can snap his fingers at his old masters who absorbed 
his earnings while he was raising bulky and cheap products, which 
yielded little or no real profit to the producer, if he takes in- 
