News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-12-12

central New York to bus, up the cheese
factories in that region. He has al
ready secured the option ON about three
hundred factories located in Delaware,
Otsego, Madison, Chenaugo, Oneida.
Herkimer, Lewis, Jefferson, St. Law
renee and Oswego counties. This is
the locality where cooperative cheese
making in this country was first estab-
lished, and its success for long series
of years has been largely due to the
natural adaptability of this region to
grass production, and to the skill and
intelligence which the cooperative sys-
tenn of dairying has developed. The
English syndicate may believe that they
secure this with what they purchase,
but they will find themselves mistaken.
1t is the cooperative system that has
won this great success, and the intro
duction of foreign capital, no matter
how abundant, cannot make its loss
good.
There are about five hundred cheese
factories in the district marked out by
this syndicate for its own. They are
patronized by thousands of farmers,
most if not all of whom are sharehold-
ers in the profits of the business, and
give an intelligent supervision to its
details that would be impossible under
system in which they were not di-
rectly interested. We do not wonder
that the farmers in this district look
with distrust on an enterprise that may
possibly destroy what they have made
successful business. 1t is no de-
traction from their intelligence to
doubt the success of a scheme to
subordinate the labor employed in
cheese production to the capital, in
stead of having both combined in one
under the cooperative system. 1t
might be a success in England, where
capital has always been uppermost,
and the land owner has been titled
gentleman, while the land worker has
been little removed FIN a boor. 1t is
not system that this country can well
come, and we are glad 10 believe that
it cannot be made successful here.
No branch of farming can in this
country be proftably conducted by
capitalists, however enterprising and
intelligent they may be. 1t is intelli-
gence and skill that are most needed in
the employees. In this country men
who possess these qualities mainly en-
ploy themselves. The English syndi-
cate has, unwittingly, perhaps, at
tempted to control a branch of farm pro-
duction in which skill and carefulness,
that money alone cannot buy, are more
important than anything else. Lack
of money has not indeed been any
difficulty for many years with Ameri-
can dairymen who work on the Coop
erative plan. All the improved appli-
ances find ready sale and ready pay in
the localities where butter and cheese
factories most flourish. A little more
money or a little less is trifiing mat
ter to men whose combined resources
are practically unlimited.
The good will, skill, and intelligence
which the patrons of cheese and butter
factories furnish are indispensable.
What is to hinder those who sell out
to the English syndicate from establish
ing new factories of their own, run as
heretofore on the cooperative plan.
This we believe will in some cases be
done, and this method which has sue
ceeded seems to us to be better policy
than the proposal by some capitalist in
this country to buy up what factories
they can, and fight the English cheese
trust with one organized Oh much the
same plan, but with American capital.