The Portland daily press., 1880-10-01
AGRICULTURAL
Dairy Products; the Advance Earlier than
Usual.


The future of dairy products is just now a
matter discussed not only in speculative Cir
cles, but among regular dealers. 1t is fact
that the customary Autumn advance in
prices has come this year thirty days earlier
than usual, and holds with all the tenacity
observable in cool and favorable shipping
days along with the early frost. To-day
fine cheese holds stifiy for 134 cents, while
at this date in 1879 81 cents was full quo
tation. Fine creamery butter held now at
30 cents was but % cents year ago. just
a month later, however, in 1879, cheese had
touched III cents and creamery butter 80
cents; while still further along in early No
vember, fine cheese sold at 139 cents, and by
January was uoted at 16 cents. Meantime
butter advanced to 40 cents, at which price,
the first week in December, several Boston
creameries changed hands. This squirt to
prices was largely benefit to the distribu-
tors, who in August and September last
bought freely of the farmers, but this year
the advance has been the farmers "boem.' -
They having had free market all this
Spring and Summer have been able to antc-
ipate every turn of the speculator and to get
the higher prices themselves. In the opin-
ion of the largest operators the future, es-
pecially on cheese, is promising one. They
are unanimous in the statement that all the
stock made previous to August has been dis
tributed, and that for the next eight months
of consumption the cheese made during Au-
gust, September and October must suffice.
They claim that all the July1cheese has been
sold and resold, and that the prospects Of 16
cents and II cents for fine cheese before
Thanksgiving time are very good. High
prices for cheese will, of course, curtail the
the consumption here, as Americans look
upon these hard-earned curds as a luxury;
but abroad cheese is an item of necessary
food, and foreign markets that have sus-
tanned 20 cents here since the war, are not
likely, with their present purchasing cOndi-
tions, to hesitate this Fall at a price they
conceded last Winter. The present price of
cheese is about 10 per cent under that of
butter. One hundred pounds of milk will
make either 10 pounds of cheese or pounds
of butter. The low prices of the Winter of
1S78-79 when cents to 8 cents was the cur
rent value of cheese, secured an introduc-
ton for American product into every Euro
pean market, and the better prices during
the following Winter of 1S79-S0 are due
chiefly to the demand of these new custom
ers. The coming season our Southern States
are to be large consumers, and feven Boston
houses have begun filling Irregular orders to
the Gulf States. New Orleans being no.
ticeable delivering point, this is a new field
ing an influence for the first time in other
distributing cities. The operators have the
more confidence in cheese because it is not
produced during the Winter months. The
last of October nearly all the cheese facto-
ries close, and the few cheeses that are made
by home industry later have no influence
even on cross-road prices Butter, on the
contrary is made all the year round, and the
West sends in January as good-favored and
as richly colored butter from granted new
milch cows as comes along in September or
October. The trade do not differ materially
in their views on the future of butter. They
believed in higher prices. The local sales of
fine butter for the next sixty .days will be
large, as majority of the householders who
occupy whole house lay in their Winters
supply of the Fall churning. 1t has been
demonstrated that June butter, when car
ried through the hot weather loses much of
its flavor; whereas September butter, made
when the COWS lget good grass, cornstalks,
grain and roots, hss flavor equal to that of
June, and not having the heat of July and
August to contend with, retains it's flavor in
to the early Spring. Hence it is that the
single-tub business is an enormous one in
October. This demand, on account Of the
improved condition of buyers, all the deal
ers believe will be twenty per cent more
than last year. Hence the market will be
cleaned up, and the receipts will not be more
than sufficient to fill the regular demand.
The receipts of butter so far this year have
been 10000 packages, or about seven per
cent. in excess of last year; while those of
cheese have been 61,0O0 packages, or over
eighty per cent. in excess of the same time
in 1879; while prices are over one hundred
per cent. higher on cheese and about forty
per cent. higher on butter.-Boston Adver-
tiser.