EXHIBITION OF 1868. 
483 
American dairying now represents a capital of more than $700,000,000. 
The cheese product last year, (1867)) sold for $26,000,000, and the butter 
product of New York alone, was nearly 85,000,000 of pounds, and the quan¬ 
tity of cheese made 72,000,0(.i0 of pounds. The value of these products, 
at a very moderate estimate, was then 60,000,000 of dollars. 
The wheat crop of New York in 1864, was 6,000,000 of bushels; oats, 19, 
000,000; rye, 2,000,000; and corn, 17,000,000. The product of New Yprk 
dairies therefore sold for more than the entire grain crop of the State. 
The wool clip of the State that year was not quite 16,000,000 pounds, 
which at a dollar per pound would amount to no more than one-fourth thut 
from the dairy. There has been a large inprease of dairy farming in New 
York since 1864. 
Looking carefully over the census, I fail to find any other agricultural in¬ 
terest in the state that can begin to measure arms with the dairy, for if we 
add the value of pork made from whey, the calves raised and the beef and 
milk sold, we can hardly get the annual product from the dairy farms of New 
York below an hundred millions of dollars. Am I wrong then in supposing 
the dairy farmers of New York to be the most powerful body of agricultur-.. 
ists, devoted to a specialty, in that State. 
It is remarkable how rapidly this interest has been developed. In 1840,, 
the value of the dairy products of New York, butter cheese and milk, was 
estimated by the U. S. census at only $10,496,000, and in all the States at 
about $34,000,000. In 1850, the product of butter in the United States and 
Territories was 313,345,306 pounds, and the cheese 106,535,893 pounds. In 
1860 the butter product had reached 469,681,372 pounds and the cheese 103,- 
663,927 pounds. The value of their products that year could not have been 
less than 200,000,000 of dollars. The total industrial product arising from 
agriculture within the United States, in 1860, was estimated at about eighteen, 
hundred millions of dollars. 
The products of the dairy, then, were one-ninth of the total agricultural 
products of the whole country. 
The cotton crop of 1859 was 4,850,000 bales, worth $242,500,000—not very 
much more, it will be seen, than the value of the products from the dairy. 
It requires nearly all our agricultural labor in the Northern States to feed 
our mouths. In 1866 we exported only 8,000,000 bushels of corn out of 
nearly 800,000,000 bushels raised, and the same proportion of wheat and all 
our other agricultural products. We cultivate now about 31,000,000 acres of 
corn and 11,000,000 acres of wheat. 
The transport of wheat and corn from the Northwest to the sea-board, and 
the freight across the Atlantic, renders it diflScult to compete with European 
grain-growers in their own markets. 
Hence turning the corn into butter, cheese, beefand bacon, or any system of 
agriculture by which you can condense a bulky product, and reduce freight, 
must be advantageous to the Western farmer. But the great West, so rich 
in soil and in almost every agricultural product, is as yet unable to supply 
itself with the products of the dairy, 
28 Ag. Trans. 
