Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1870 [PAGE 393]

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dairy product was then estimated at about forty-three millions, showing that during the last ten years we increased our dairy products in value more than three hundred and fifty millions of dollars, which would make an increase during the period, in per centage, of about 800; but it must be borne in mind that values have generally increased, both of manufactures and farm products. The articles produced in the dairies have increased in value as much (if not more,) than other farm products. If we allow an'appreciation of one half in values, we still have an increase of fifty per cent, per annum in dairy products, which you will say is a very large growth, although we allow a large estimate for appreciations in prices, and perhaps more than sufficient. Ten years ago, the total amount of cheese made in the State of New York, according to reports made to the authorities at Washington, was about thirtyfive millions of pounds for that year. The market reports of the city of New York up to the first of January, 1870, and for and during the year 1869, show receipts in that city alone, of eighty millions of pounds, and this, after consumption at home had been taken out, and we may reasonably presume some millions of pounds were consumed at home, and in towns and villages all over the country, which never went to New York. From the statistics and the evidence we have, I think it fair to infer that the production of New York State alone, last year, was not less than one hundred millions of pounds, which brought more money than the whole cheese crop of the United States in the year 1860. The number of pounds of butter made 'annually is not much less than the number of pounds of cheese, but the value of the former article is much greater than that of the latter. If you allow me to venture on an approximate estimate, I think it would be safe to say that in a dairy production of four hundred millions of dollars, we might put about two hundred and sixty millions to the credit of butter, and one hundred and forty millions to the credit of cheese. This is a goodly result, indeed, bringing rich rewards to the industrious—comfort, affluence and cultivation to the firesides of many worthy homes, and relieving from that severe toil, the anxieties of which, at an earlier day, were pressingly severe. The statistics of the cheese manufacture in the northwest can be more accurately ascertained at the meetings of these associations than at any other place, or in any other way; but the making of butter being differently conducted, the article being made at home in farmers' houses, and sold in smaller quantities, and often in a more retail way, the statistics in detail are very difficult to collect; we can get at aggregates sold at wholesale, but we can not readily separate the productions of the several States and counties; also the home consumption of butter is very large, and our estimate of the whole make, even when made under the auspices of the agricultural bureau, may be below the truth. As a fact which may indicate something of the extent of the crop in the northwest, we find in the Chicago papers, at the close of 1869, a statement of the receipts and shipments to and from that city for the year; omitting, be it remembered, all transactions by express, we find the arrivals reported at a trifle over eight millions of pounds, and the shipments