We rejoice that the Grange offers some encouragement to farmers' wives, and recognizes them as equal co-workers with man in the noble course of truth and justice. Let us accept every opportunity to make ourselves more intelligent wives and mothers, and daily use our influence for the promotion of every noble enterprise. Let us advocate the doing away of useless work, and claim for ourselves more time for social intercourse, reading and thinking. It were better to save our strength that we may live to raise our boys and girls, and give them good home influence, than to wear out with ceaseless toil, and leave them to the care of strangers. Every hour taken from hard work, and spent either in mental or physical recreation is an hour added to our lives.

"There is many a rest on the road of life,

If we only would stop to take it,

And many a tone from the happy land,

If the happy heart could wake it."

Let us not then, my sisters, be anxious for more work to do, but only ask for time to well do that which is already our duty to do. The Master has given us our work, and he will presently require an account of our labor. Let us be able to show a faithful performance of the work entrusted to us, not forgetting that it required the best efforts of the head and heart as well as the steady toil of the hands. We trust the day is not far distant when farmers and farmers' wives shall rise from the obscure position they have so long held and stand the acknowledged equal of any class. If they do not it will be their own fault.

The way is open for improvement. Let us avail ourselves of it, and not only strive to make our business a success, but to elevate ourselves socially and morally. Let women as well as men enter heartily into the work of reform. There is nothing ignoble in it, but much that requires our earnest labor. As we glory in the home and its hallowed associations, as we love the dear ones who call us wife or mother, let us strive to elevate that home, to make it respected in the world, and give aid to every cause tending to its prosperity and happiness. Happy in its surroundings, rejoicing in its prosperity. So let us ask only for more time to enjoy it, earnestly hoping that in the good time coming to farmers, there may also come a rest for the farmer's wife,-a daily respite from toil, in

which she may find time to cultivate the higher and nobler attributes of her nature.

"Tis ours to guard a sacred trust,

We shape a heaven-born plan,
The noble purpose wise and just,
To aid our fellow man.

Too long have Avarice and Greed,
With coffers running o'er,
Brought sorrow and distress and need
To labor's humble door.

A royal road to plan and power
Have rank and title been,
We herald the auspicious hour
When honest Worth may win.

Let every heart and hand unite
In the benignant plan;
The noble purpose just and right,
To aid our fellow man.

From Maine to California's slope
Resound the Reaper's song,
We come to build the nation's hope
To slay the giant wrong."

THE DAIRY-A CHAT WITH THE FARMERS.

BY CHARLES SEYMOUR, LA CROSSE.

Now for a free and easy chat about butter and cheese. In my frequent journeys between the East and the West, the conviction has been forced upon me that our western farmers are working at great disadvantage as compared with farmers at the East, in respect to products for, and access to, market; and it seems the evil can be partly remedied by reducing the bulk and by increasing the value of agricultural products. A ton of good wheat in the valley of the upper Mississippi is worth nearly thirty dollars. A ton of good cheese is worth nearly two hundred and fifty dollars. A ton of good butter is worth about six hundred dollars. The wheat crop is as uncertain as the wheat market is fickle. Fluctuations in pro

ductions or markets of wheat seldom redound to the advantage of the producer; as the advance in price is chiefly secured by the carriers or speculators. The market for cheese and butter is steady and enlarging, while the supply or production can be generally regulated by the farmers, and is not likely to exceed the demand. The soil is impaired by continuous crops of grain; while the dairyman's farm can be kept in a high state of fertility. Cows convert the crops into milk; and the farmers manufacture the milk into cheese and butter, which command the cash at remunerative prices. The dairy almost turns the farmer into a manufacturer.

He will, perhaps, have no occasion to adopt the remark of the witty Milesian, who, while engaged in carrying hods of brick up a ladder to the sixth story of a building, congratulated himself that the mason at the top of the wall had to do all the work; but it is nevertheless true, that dairymen can boast that their cows do an important part of the farm work. Western farmers must emancipate themselves from the slavery in which they are bound by the transportation monopolies, so long as bulky grain freights exceed the capacity of facilities supplied by the carriers. Compactness into the smallest space, and value of the greatest degree must be the points aimed at by western farmers. Instead of raising farm products that are so bulky and cheap that the carriers demand and take every third bushel of grain for transporting them to remote markets of the East and Europe, it is obviously better to send products to market that will not require more than one-twentieth of the shipment to defray transportation, provided there is any surplus after the home markets are supplied. It is not an unusul thing to see products of eastern dairies brought West. This sort of logic will soon have its effect upon the hard-heads who now insist upon dividing the products of the farm, so that the producers get the toll and the middle-men get the grist. Land servitude or compulsory work in the soil with poor remuneration is what the carriers and middle-men mean, when they say to the farmers of the West, "Raise wheat, and let us carry it to market and exchange it for eastern or foreign merchandise." The farmer who gets the products of his farm into the greatest value and least bulk has become a free man; and he can snap his fingers at his old masters who absorbed his earnings while he was raising bulky and cheap products, which yielded little or no real profit to the producer, if he takes in

to consideration exhausting effects of grain-growing on land. With inferior soil the New England farmers are making greater profit than the grain-raising farmers in the most fertile districts of the West, because of nearness to markets and successful dairies.

I will here give a synopsis of the most important facts elicited in the discussion during the three-days' session of the prominent dairymen of New England and New York, held at the capital of Vermont.

MAGNITUDE OF THE DAIRY BUSINESS.

Ex-Lieutenant-Governor Hyde, of Stratford, Connecticut, the most successful breeder of Devons in America, and one of the first-class dairymen of the country, estimated the capital invested in American dairies at over one thousand millions of dollars, ($1,000,000,000). The annual cheese products exceed $30,000,000. Our annual exports of cheese are valued at about $10,000,000 for say 70,000,000 pounds. Our butter products exceed $200,000,000 in value, of which we export over 10,000,000 pounds, or $2,500,000 in value. The report of the American Dairymen's Association for 1871 gives 1,282 cheese and butter-factories in the United States, against 1,233 in 1870, and 1,066 in 1869. More than half these factories show an average of 415 cows for each establishment.

The whole consumed the milk of half a million cows. The following were the averages of the states leading in dairy manufactures in 1870: For each factory in New York, 419 cows; Ohio, 519 cows; Illinois, Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan, collectively, 383 cows; Wisconsin, 278 cows; Pennsylvania, 182 cows. The number of dairy factories in these states are reported as follows: New York, 963; Ohio, 98; Illinois, 46; Massachusetts, 30; Vermont, 35; Michigan, 26; Wisconsin, 26; Pennsylvania, 19. In the single county of Oswego, New York, a capital of $9,000,000 is invested in dairy agriculture alone.

CHEESE AS NUTRITIOUS AND ECONOMICAL FOOD.

The inspector of milk at Providence, R. I., after thoroughly testing the matter, asserts and maintains by incontrovertible proof, that sirloin steak (adding the loss on bones) at 35 cents per pound is dearer than milk at 14 cents per quart; corned beef at 17 cents as dear as milk at 15 cents, and eggs at 30 cents per dozen as dear as milk at 20 cents per quart. Hence he concludes that milk even at 10

or 12 cents per quart is the cheapest animal food that can be used. England has been from time immemorial a great cheese-eating country. Her laboring and her poorer classes demand it as the cheapest and most nutritious animal food within their reach; and this demand will increase as long as the article can be supplied at reasonable rates. But while the people of England are increasing at about the rate of a million a year, her capacity for producing butter and chease is not increasing.

The same may be said of Germany, to which England has looked for large supplies. The time is near at hand when these realms must be very largely supplied from abroad; and as there are no other sections of Europe making butter and cheese to export in any considerable quantity, the want will have to be supplied as a matter of necessity by the dairy of the United States. It is estimated that the demand for cheese in England alone will increase at the rate of ten million pounds per year, while the annual increase in our home demand is about six million pounds. But high above that of cheese, rises the butter interest. We export as yet comparatively little butter; we consume nearly four fold as much as we do of cheese-or in other words, about 15 pounds of the one, and 4 of the other, to each inhabitant per annum.

INTERESTING RESULTS OF NINETY NEW YORK DAIRIES.

Prof. Wickson, of Utica, N. Y., gave results of ninety cheese factories and creameries, located in different parts of the state of New York, giving the average net return per cow to patrons, the highest average per cow to a single patron, and the lowest average per cow to a single patron. The figures are drawn from the actual records of the yields of more than thirty-six thousand cows. The average yield per cow in these factories during the season of 1874 has been $39.57. In the individual factories the highest average per cow reported is $55.07, and the lowest average per cow in a factory running the same number of days is $31.22. Taking all the cows into the account, it appears that the average return per cow for the season of average length is $39.57. It will be remembered that these figures are factory averages, not average yields in single herds.

It appears from comparing the reports of these factories that the average return net to patrons for 100 ponuds of milk has been one dollar and twenty-two cents. The highest net yield is one dollar