42 
STATE AGRICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 
has grown so wonderfully in favor as to have given origin to 
large numbers of cheese manufacturers’ associations and cheese 
factories in nearly all the New England, Middle and Western 
States,and done much to increase the exports of American cheese 
from 6,500,000 pounds in 1857 to 100,000,000 in 1867 ! Not 
only so, the system has resulted in the manufacture of cheese 
fit to be exported ; which certainly could not be alleged of the 
four or five millions of pounds of miserable stufi* we were 
wont to send abroad in former times. When butter-making 
comes to have part in the plan of these associated dairies, as it 
ought to have, its average quality will be, in like manner, im¬ 
proved. 
American dairies should eventually be able to compete, as 
to quality, with the world-noted English dairies in their own 
markets ; and the prospect now is that very soon they will. 
In the furtherance of this important enterprise associations 
of intelligent, interested parties—especially the New York 
State Cheese Manufacturers’ and the American Dairymen’s 
c/ 
Associations—have rendered very important service. That no 
facts essential to success might be overlooked and no means of 
information disregarded, in 1866 the American Association even 
sent out a Commissioner or Delegate (X. A. Willard, Esq., 
of New York,) to the Old World with the view of adding as 
much as possible to the common stock of American knowledge 
on this subject. 
The dairy business, as practiced on the farm, is an exceed¬ 
ingly laborious and trying one upon the female portion of the 
household; and on this account, also, the farmers of the 
West and of the whole country are to be congratulated on the 
highly satisfactory manner in which, as individuals, it is pos¬ 
sible for them to escape from its further prosecution. In this 
state, so far as we are informed, Walworth and Fond du Lac 
counties are in the lead, with others following hard after them. 
The value of Wisconsin dairy products in 1860 was $1,311,- 
043 ; in 1865, (several counties failing to report,) $2,483,081— 
an increase of nearly 100 per cent., notwithstanding the re¬ 
turned decrease in the total number of neat cattle. 
