CHAPTER XIV.

THE DAIRY INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

By H. H. WING.

In a country of so great extent and with so many varieties of soil and climate as the United States, it is not to be expected that the various industries will be equally developed over the whole country, but that each will be most extensive and best developed in those places where the soil, climate, and other natural conditions are most favorable. Consequently we find that, while cows are kept in large numbers, and while milk, butter, and cheese are produced in considerable quantities in all parts of the country, there are certain favored localities where this industry is the leading, if not the sole, occupation of the agricultural community. These distinctively dairy regions are all in the more northerly portions of the country, but they extend from east to west as far as the country has been settled. The climate is the climate of the colder part of the temperate zone, the soil is generally fertile, though often hilly, and is well adapted to the growth of the grasses, and there is an abundance of pure water from either wells, springs, or running streams. In the States of New York, Wisconsin, Vermont, Iowa, and part of Minnesota dairying is the leading agricultural industry, while in the States of Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and the Territory of Dakota it forms a very important part of farm practice.

The distribution of milch cows will give a very accurate idea of the extent of dairying in the different parts of the country. The latest available returns are those made to the Department of Agriculture in January, 1888, a summary of which is given below:

It will be seen that about four sevenths of the cows are found in ten States. Some of these States, as Missouri and Texas, are not, however, distinctively dairy States, but make a large showing in numbers of milch cows, because stock-growing is an

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important industry in those States, and cows that are running at large on the range and suckling calves are classed as milch cows, while as a matter of fact but very few of them are ever milked at all.

In the following table the States are arranged in the order of the largest percentage of milch cows in relation to other cattle. It gives a rather better idea of the States that are most extensively engaged in dairying, several small States that did not appear at all in the other table being found quite well up in this. In this table are included only the States included in the first table and such other States in which more than 50 per cent of all the cattle are milch cows.

The States included in the above table fall quite naturally into three groups so far as their dairy industry is concerned.

The first, comprising the States down to and including Delaware, is made up entirely of Eastern States. Many of them are quite small in area, and the surface in all is more or less broken and hilly. The live-stock industry is almost wholly devoted to dairying, and, as a consequence, of the total number a very large proportion of the cattle are cows. An important part of the dairying in this group is the furnishing of milk for immediate consumption to the numerous large cities. Most of the larger condensed-milk factories are also in this region. Of the remaining milk about equal portions, as far as may be estimated, are made into butter and cheese.

The second group is made of the States of Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri. They are States of large size, with extensive areas of level or nearly level prairie land, in which the grasses grow naturally, abundantly, and luxuriantly. They are also extremely well adapted to the growth of Indian corn, and for the most part are situated in what is known as the "great central corn belt," and are therefore great beef-producing States, with dairying as a very important though still secondary part of the cattle industry. Of the dairy products of this region butter undoubtedly leads, though large quanties of cheese are made in some localities, notably Wisconsin, and several large cities claim a large amount of milk for immediate consumption.

The last two States of the list, as has been said before, are not distinctively dairy States; but they are of large size, and immense herds of cattle run at large on their extensive grassy plains, which accounts for the large number of cows credited to them. However, as the country becomes better settled the dairy industry extends farther west and southwest, and in all probability they and several other of the Western States may be classed among the dairy States at no very distant day.

PRODUCTION AND EXPORT OF DAIRY PRODUCTS.

In the short time allotted for the preparation of this paper it has been impossible to gather complete recent statistics of the amount of dairy products produced and exported in the United States. Through the kindness of Mr. B. F. Van Valkenburg, assistant dairy commissioner of the State of New York, we have been furnished with a very complete report of the trade in dairy products of the city of New York for the year ending October 31, 1888, prepared by him for the New York State Dairymen's Association.

Total value of dairy products handled in New York City, during the year ending
October 31, 1888.

Total receipts of butter for the year ending October 31, 1888..
Total receipts of butter for the year ending October 31, 1887.

Increase of receipts of butter in 1888 over 1887.

Increase of receipts of cheese in 1888 ever 1887

9,652,500.00 $43, 172, 756, 57

Packages. 1,733, 222 1,662, 436

70,786

79, 620

Exports of butter and cheese for the year ending October 31, 1888, were as follows:

Total value of dairy products exported.

$1,266, 210.00

7,984, 919.25

Value of butter and cheese exported in year ending October 31, 1887.
Decrease in value of dairy products exported.....

9, 251, 129. 25 11,000, 450.00

1,749, 321.75

The exports of butter from the port of New York and from all ports in the United States for the past six years has been as follows:

The amount of oleomargarine handled is so small that no record of it is kept. One or two facts of significance are shown by the table.

The first, is the constant and rapid decrease in the amount of butter exported amounting in six years to something more than 62 per cent while the total amount of butter handled has been increasing. This shows that we are coming to depend less and less upon foreign countries for a market for our dairy products.

The second fact of significance is in relation to the almost complete extinction of the trade in oleomargarine. The trade in this substance at the time that the national law went into effect, in November, 1886. was enormous; and that the business should have been so completely controlled in so short a time, is largely due to the efforts of an efficient dairy commission, in seeing that the national and State laws were strictly enforced.

While New York city exports about seven-eighths of all the dairy products exported from the United States it is not to be inferred that seven-eighths of all the dairy products produced in the country are handled in New York city. It has been impossible to get accurate statistics of all the large dairy markets; but a late estimate of the Commissioner of Agriculture places the value of all the dairy products of the country for the year 1888, at $380,000,000; while the total value of the dairy products handled in the New York market for the same period as given in the table above was only $43,172,756 or about one-ninth of the whole. However, the proportion between butter, cheese, and milk, in the New York market will probably very nearly hold good in the country as a whole and will give a fair idea of the relative amounts of each produced.

DAIRY CATTLE-KIND, CARE, AND MANAGEMENT.

By far the larger portion of the dairy cows of the United States are what is known as natives or scrubs; that is they are descendants of the cattle that were brought over by the people by whom the country was settled, and have since been bred with little or no regard to ancestry and with more or less admixture of the blood of the more improved breeds. This does not indicate that the improved breeds are not appreciated-for in the United States are more Jerseys than on the Island of Jersey, more Holstein-Friesians than in Holland, and more Short Horns than in England—but that the interest in improved stock which only began within the last fifty or seventy-five years has not yet been able to diffuse itself through the mass and overcome the indifference of the great majority of breeders; for it is a lamentable fact that far too many, perhaps even a majority, of our dairymen make no attempt to increase the product of their cows by judicious selection and breeding, considering that a cow is a cow, no matter how much or how little she may be able to give, and one bull as good as another if he is able to procreate his species. The following statistics will show something of the average production of the dairy cows through the country:

In the season of 1888, 1,163 creameries and cheese factories in the State of New York were visited by the agents of the State dairy commissioner. These factories received the milk of 407,810 cows (nearly a third of all in the State), and the average product of each cow was 3,034 pounds of milk for the season. This netted the farmer a trifle over 80 cents per hundredweight or gave him a return of about $25 per cow for the season. These factories were open for business about six and one