for a long series of years, he becomes a public benefactor, and deserves to have his name handed down to posterity along with the names of Fulton, Morse, and Howe.

I have selected his statistics, not because I could find nothing of a later date, but because the conditions under which he carried on the dairy business were similar to the conditions which surround us. His farm was on the eastern slope of the Catskill mountains, and occupied two hillsides, with an interval between them, through which ran a little brook. As he kept

fifty cows the first six years and eighty cows the seventh year, I have found it easier to take the first six years and fifty cows and make a general average for the six years, as follows:

Average quantity of milk per day for each cow for

eight months,

Average weight of butter per day from each cow for eight months,

Average value received for each quart of milk made into butter,

Average number pounds butter from each cow for sea son of eight months,

Average price received for butter for six years, Average amount of cash received for butter from each cow per year,

Average amount of pork fattened from milk of each cow per year,

Average price received for pork,

Net profit on fifty cows each year, for six years, after deducting all expenses and allowing $700 for the interest on the capital invested, .

Average net profits per annum on each cow over all

expenses,

18.0 lbs.; or 9.46 qts.

11.48 oz.

1.77 cts.

180 lbs.

24.2 cts.

$43 56

129 lbs.

10 cts. per lb.

$1,439 32

$28 78

His seventh year, 1863, owing to the higher prices caused by the war, was the most profitable of all. His net profits on eighty cows, after paying all expenses and allowing seven hundred dollars for interest on the investment, were three thousand seven hundred and four dollars and forty cents.

As he valued his cows and farm at ten thousand dollars, it is plain to see that his cows were more valuable than bank stock, Government bonds, or a California gold mine, his net profits on his capital being forty-four per cent. per annum for the year 1863, and 21.4 per cent. per annum for the previous six years. When we bear in mind that he commenced business in 1857, a year of great business depression, and that the first four years, out of seven he followed it, were previous to the war and high prices, we can readily admit that his tables are safe ones to go by if we only practice the same care and economy.

His cows were native stock, he had no cattle to sell, no motive to misrepresent, and, so far as I know, his statements have never been disputed. There is nothing in his practice, the amount of his production, or the price he received, which we may not equal, if not excel. The average price

he received for butter, 24.2 cents per pound, was not excessive.

The average price for New York State butter in New York, for the year 1884, according to the statistics of the Agricultural Department, was twentysix cents per pound, and Bradford county butter is fully equal to it.

The experiments of associated dairying have, in the majority of cases, proved even more successful than individual dairying. The following report of Mr. E. S. Munson, superintendent of the Franklin creamery, Franklin,

New York, for the season of 1870, is to be found in the report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1871:

Average number of cows,

The average price of butter was nearly,

The average price of cheese per pound,

880

2,310,569

78,459

124.966

39 cents.

83 cents.

Taking the season as a whole, the patrons netted one dollar and thirtythree cents to one dollar and thirty-five cents for one hundred pounds of milk. or a net return of nearly three cents per quart for milk supplied.

per cow.

The following statement was prepared by the Hon. J. S. Vanduzer, the owner of a butter factory near Elmira, New York, and published in the Elmira Daily Advertiser, January 30, 1874: "Mr. Samuel Sayres delivered at our factory from March 25 to November 29, 1873, 38,374 quarts of milk. which, at the prices we paid him, netted $964 11, or over $80 We buy milk on the basis of a pound of butter from 12 quarts of milk. The average net price we paid for butter at the factory was a fraction over 30 cents per pound, or 2 cents per quart for the milk. Mr. Sayres' cows were giving on an average of six quarts of milk on the 1st of December. Mr. Hendricks, who sold us the milk of four cows, received net proceeds $324 41, or $85 61 per cow. Mr. James E. Whitley received over $70 per

cow".

It must be admitted that in 1870 and in 1873, the currency was still somewhat inflated, but if we reduce the price of three cents per quart at the Franklin creamery, and the price of two and one half cents per quart at the Elmira creamery, to a gold basis, we shall find that the patrons of these creameries received better prices for milk than Mr. Pratt, whose average for six years was not quite two cents.

In a letter from the Hon. J. S. Vanduzer, dated June 9, 1885, he says: "We now have about six hundred cows supplying milk at our creamery, and are conducting it on the coöperative basis. Last year our milk netted the partners two and one tenth cents per quart, the year before nearly two and one fourth cents per quart. We get all the butter we can out of the milk, and then make the skim milk into cheese, also working some buttermilk into the cheese in the spring and fall, and, if the cheese is not to be held, also in the summer. We aim to make an 'A No. 1' article of butter, and ship it all to New York."

The following statement was prepared for me by Mr. W. S. Lester, the gentlemanly and energetic manager of the Troy creamery, Troy, Bradford county, Pa., S. H. Heywood, proprietor:

66

We had the cream from about one thousand four hundred cows during the season of 1884. We do not make cheese, butter only. The average price paid dairymen at the farm, from April 1 to December 1, for the amount of cream that made a pound of butter was twenty-two and one half cents. We do not buy cream by the gauge, as many do, but allow the dairymen just what butter his cream will make. On the gauge plan, the dairyman who uses plenty of ice will raise so much of the poor cream along with the rich, that a gauge of his cream will not make quite a pound of butter; and the man who uses no ice, or a spring of running water, his gauge of cream, all through hot weather, will overrun a pound of butter from twenty to thirty per cent. The gauge is not an accurate measure for milk set at different temperatures. Our standard dairies last year netted their owners between forty dollars and fifty dollars per cow for the butter

sold, and the milk was left on the farm sweet, for raising calves and hogs." The following record was kindly furnished by Mr. Jesse T. Stalford, of Wyalusing, Pa., a person whose statements can be implicitly relied upon as being careful, conscientious, and exact:

Received, commencing the 1st day of May, 1883, and ending the 30th day of April, 1884.

Number of cows kept,

13 of them grade Jersey and 1 native.
4 of the cows 2

14

years

old.

Sold 5,802 quarts of cream, at 10 cents per quart,

66

66 18.629

"milk at 3 and 4 cents per quart,

Raised 4 calves, worth at 1 year old,

66 5 hogs,

Amount of receipts,

Deduct value of feed other than hay and pasture,

$ 580 20 692 42

100 00

50 00

$1,422 62

200 00

$1,222 62

Average cash receipts from each cow, eighty-seven dollars and thirtythree cents, after deducting value of feed other than hay and pasture. He states that he raised enough grain, potatoes, and meat to supply his own family, besides selling enough to pay all his hired help, blacksmith bills and wear and tear of farm implements.

He values his farm and cows at about seven thousand dollars. His clear protits, after deducting all expenses and four hundred and twenty dollars, the interest on the capital invested, was eight hundred and four dollars and sixty-two cents, or nearly seventeen and one half per cent. per annum interest on his capital.

Every farmer is not situated near a railroad so that he can sell his milk and cream like Mr. Stalford, but had Mr. Stalford made his milk and cream into butter like Zadoc Pratt, his profits would have been but a little less than they were, and large enough to satisfy any reasonable man. He states that eight quarts of his cows' milk will make one pound of butter, and consequently would have made three thousand and fifty-four pounds of butter, which, at the average price of good butter in New York, for the year 1884, twenty-six cents per pound, would have brought,

He could have raised all his calves, worth,
And the same number of hogs he did raise,

Deduct value of grain fed,

Or an average value for each cow's product, after deducting grain fed-$71, .

$794 04

350 00

50 00

$1,194 04

200 00

$994 04

Mr. J. C. Straight, proprietor of a milk, cream, and butter depot at El mira, New York, very obligingly furnishes the following: I buy the milk from three hundred cows; pay two cents per quart till the first of November, and then three cents per quart till the first of April.

According to a test made a short time ago, eleven quarts of milk made one pound of butter.

The creamery established at Wyalusing a year ago was not a success financially to the proprietors. I think it was started without a contract for the milk of a sufficient number of cows. It requires the milk of five or six hundred cows to make a factory profitable to the owners.

The people of northern Pennsylvania have not been entirely ignorant of the advantages of dairying. According to the census tables of 1880, the number of cows kept and the amount of dairy products in the northern tier of counties in the year 1879 were as follows:

About one twenty-second part of all the cows in the State of Pennsylvania are owned in Bradford county, which leads every other county in the number of its cows except Chester, and one sixteenth of all the butter made on farms in this State is made in Bradford, which exceeds Chester and every other county in the amount of butter produced, and its quality is not excelled by any.

Reading columns of figures is not an interesting entertainment for an audience, any more than reading the tables from an old almanac, but figures are useful when they tell the truth, and I hope you will pardon me for introducing a few more.

The following statistics of the number of cows, (the amount of daily products and grain raised were obtained from the census of 1880, and the prices are stated to be the average farm prices in the State,) were taken from the report of the Department of Agriculture for the year 1879.

There were owned and kept in the counties of Bradford, Susquehanna,

Tioga, and Erie, on June 1, 1880:

114,660 cows, valued at $26 24 each, amounting to,

Total value of dairy products in four counties for the year 1879,

$3,016,550 12,906,117 lbs.

$3,097,468

177,527 lbs.

$12,426

6,672,616

$533,809

$3,643,703

$833,719 92

1,198,940 40

There was raised in the same counties in the year 1879631,606 bushels wheat, valued at $1 32 per bushel, 2,220,260 bushels corn, valued at 54 cents per bushel, 3,527,966 bushels oats, valued at 36 cents per bushel, 82,755 bushels rye, valued at 68 cents per bushel, 831,508 bushels buckwheat, valued at 60 cents per bushel, 265,996 bushels barley, valued at 83 cents per bushel, .

1,270,067 76

56,273 40 498,904 80

220,776 68

$4,078,682 96

Total value of all the grain in the four counties, . Taking out the value of the buckwheat, which has no competition from the West, the dairy products exceed in value all the grain raised by nearly sixty-four thousand dollars.

It will be observed that the census gives no account of milk, cream, and buttermilk used in the family or fed to calves and hogs. If we had a fair account of these, there is no doubt that the value of the dairy products in the counties of Bradford, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Erie would far overbalance the value of all the grain raised in them, and also produced at a less expenditure of labor and loss of fertility from the soil.

I have endeavored to show that, from the year 1857 down to the present, in good times and in bad times, dairying has been profitable in the dairy regions of Pennsylvania and New York when carried on by men of intelligence, experience, and proper energy. I am sorry that I am not able to show what the profits of grain-raising, if any, have been in the same regions. The manufacturer can tell the cost of a yard of cloth or a ton of iron to the tenth part of a mill. The dairyman can compute the cost of his products with reasonable certainty, but the exact cost of raising a bushel of grain is a problem which has never yet been solved. There are so many varying conditions, so many different influences, so many uncertain factors and unknown quantities that enter into the calculation, that no farmer living can tell exactly what a bushel of grain costs, unless he buys it in the market. He cannot tell how much it cost to raise a bushel last year, nor how much it will cost to raise one next year. The value of the land varies in the same iocality, and even on the same farm, the price of seed, the price of labor and team work vary, the amount of rainfall and snow fall, of heat and cold, vary; the amount of damage from storms and frosts, from birds, and worms, and insects, from diseases, from rust, and smut--evils over which we have but limited control -vary in different seasons and in different localities. If a farmer manures a field with barnyard manure at one dollar, or guano at fifty dollars per ton, he can never tell with absolute certainty how much of its cost to charge to the first crop, or how much to the second or third. The Dakota farmer merely figures up 8 BD. AG.