The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-09-04
The Low Price of Butter.

The Low Price OF Butter.
All authorities agree that the present
low prices for butter are due to over
production, and some writers are urging
that our only relief must come from
expectation, which is at present very
small indeed, only about one per cent
of the production. But here we are
confronted by the fact that American
dairymen are not making much butter
that foreign buyers will take. 1t is not
manufactured, sailed, or packed to
their taste. Again, if we export but
ter, we shall have to take our pay, di-
rectly or indirectly, in the products of
the nations to which we sell it. No
nation can or will pay cash, and cash
only, for staple foreign products; for this
tends to exhaust the store of coin and
bullion upon which the financial solidity
of all trading nations must be sustained.
AS the present commercial policy of the
Union is one of high protection, we
can not take foreign goods in payment
for our. butter (supposing we can or
will make it as they want iD, without
allowing for the duties we must pay on
those foreign goods, before we can put
our hands on them here. This will re-
duce the returns of foreign butter ship
ments very materially. We are ourself
protectionist, because we want to see
all our home industries fully developed;
but we can not deny that protection is
not favorable to the interests of the ex-
porters of farm products. 1t is not in
tended to be that, but to give us good
and handy home market among our
own industrial classes.
We have now only the home market;
and what with oleo, butter factories,
and the greatly-increased area of the
"butter zone," we are making more
butter than our customers care for.
What is the remedy, since we are not
free of the worlds market, nor pre-
pared to enter it if we were? Is it any
thing else than to reduce production?
We might say " improve the quality"
also. But even for the best butter
there is an easily-reached limit to the
quantity family, a city, or a nation,
will use, especially at high price.
Now here comes into consideration
an argument we have often made use
of in our structures upon the manage
ment of our New England railroads and
especially those of Vermont and New
Ilampshire,-states without much avail
able water transportation. We can not
all make fine market or export butter.
1t is an impossibility, and must remain
so until the average skill of our farmers
as dairymen is greatly increased. Many
farms, as well as many people, are not
well suited to dairying, which is really
almost fine art. But butter is the
only, or almost the only, thing we can
get to market without cutting out big
slice for freightage, to say nothing OF
commissions and other expenses OF
shipment. We are forced into dairyine
as the only practical alternative to ship.
ping off the fertility of our soil in hay
potatoes and other marketable products
We say 'shipping off the fertility
and this has been a great bugbear ano
a strong argument to keep our people
down to exclusive dairying. But fer
tility is not necessarily exhausted by 6
judicious farming, even when we shiI
the crude products of the farm. The
only question is, can we ship these
crude products and maintain the fertil
ity? and the answer is that the whole
thing must turn upon what we are t.
net on the crude products; while that
in turn, depends upon what we mus
pay to reach the consumers with them
1t is not saying too much to asser
that cheaper access to consumers il
the key to the situation. Give us that
and hundreds of our farmers will drol
dairying for other lines of farming
which they are better calculated or bet
ter situated to pursue. Give us tina
, freight express" to all the manufac
=, turing and commercial centers of New
, England. That is what we require t,
ease the butter market; and we cal
> have it if our boast is true that this i
a government of the people, by the PEG
e pie, for the people,"