198 
STATE AGEICULTUKAL SOCIETY. • 
BUTTER-MAKING MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHEESE-MAKING. 
We come together fancying that cheese is the most impor¬ 
tant dairy interest in the country, but it never has been, and 
never will be the great interest. Our total product of cheese 
this year may be put at 240,000,000 of pounds. If we assume 
that 15 cts. has been the average net receipts, the whole pro¬ 
duct amounts to only $36,000,000. The butter product of the 
country in 1860, was more than 450,000,000 of pounds. It 
can scarcely be less this year than 700,000,000 of pounds, for 
we have ten million more butter eaters to-day than in 1860. 
«/ 
If the price of butter be assumed at 80 cts., the butter pro¬ 
duct amounts to $210,000,000. Compare for a moment the 
difference, $210,000,000 against [$36,000,000, and tell me 
which is the more important interest. And yet the butter in¬ 
terest is wholly and totally independent of the foreign trade. 
Home consumption and home prices sustain the interest. 
The butter dairymen have been quiet; they have organized 
no societies, they have allowed you to demonstrate to the pub¬ 
lic the great advantages of the cheese factory system and have 
been content to pocket their profits without a word of com¬ 
plaint, that the American Dairymen’s Association had ignored 
their branch of the business. It is a question for you to solve 
which interest has been most benefited in this operation. 
Cheese-men come here, fearful of the establishment of butter 
factories. They insist that every particle of cream must go 
into the curds, when you know it cannot all be retained, while 
it has been proved over and over again, that the night’s milk 
may be skimmed at certain seasons of the year, and when thus 
mingled with the morning’s milk, the expert cannot detect the 
ioss of cream in the cheese. 
The fact was told you at the convention last winter, that 
certain butter dairymen, making a fancy article, received for it 
a dollar per pound the year round. Did it occur to you how 
much a good cow would yield at that rate? Some dairies 
make an average of 240 pounds and more per cow, per annum. 
That would be at the rate of $240 per cow, to say nothing of 
the skimmed-milk. Your best cheese dairies may have turned 
off perhaps $75 to $80 per cow. The question which con- 
