He has no pigs to sell, because, for a long while past, he has had nothing upon which to feed them, the milk being sold.  The pigsties are full of weeds; he can hardly fatten one for his own use, and has scarcely better facilities for keeping pigs than an agricultural labourer.  The carriage of the milk to the station requires at least two quick horses, and perhaps more; one cannot do it twice a day, even with a very moderate load.  The hard highway and the incessant work would soon knock a single horse up.  The mowing machine and the horse-rake must be drawn by a similar horse, so that the dairy farm may be said to require a style of horse like that employed by omnibus proprietors.  The acreage being limited, he can only keep a certain number of horses, and, therefore, has no room for a brood mare.

Farmer George is aware that nothing now pays like a brood cart mare with fair good luck.  The colt born in April is often sold six months afterwards, in September, for 20_l_. or 25_l_., and even up to 30_l_., according to excellence.  The value of cart-horse colts has risen greatly, and those who are fortunately able to maintain a brood mare have reaped the profit.  But Mr. George, selling the milk, and keeping a whole stud of nags for the milk cart, the mowing machine, the horse-rake, and so forth, cannot maintain a brood mare as well.  In the winter, it is true, the milk may sell for as high a price as tenpence per gallon of four quarts, but then he has a difficulty in procuring the quantity contracted for, and may perhaps have to buy of neighbours to keep up the precise supply.

His herd must also be managed for the purpose, and must be well fed, and he will probably have to buy food for them in addition to his hay.  The nag horses, too, that draw the milk waggon, have to be fed during the winter, and are no slight expense.  As for fattening a beast in a stall, with a view to take the prize at Christmas at the local show, he has abandoned that, finding that it costs more to bring the animal up to the condition required than he can afterwards sell it for.  There is no profit in that.  America presses upon him hard, too—­as hard, or harder, than on the wheat-grower.  Cases have been known of American cheese being sold in manufacturing towns as low as twopence per pound retail—­given away by despairing competition.

How, then, is the dairyman to succeed when he cannot, positively cannot, make cheese to sell at less than fourpence per pound wholesale?  Of course such instances are exceptional, but American cheese is usually sold a penny or more a pound below the English ordinary, and this cuts the ground from under the dairyman’s feet; and the American cheese too is acquiring a reputation for richness, and, price for price, surpasses the English in quality.  Some people who have long cherished a prejudice against the American have found, upon at last being induced to try the two, that the Canadian cheddar is actually superior to the English cheddar, the English selling at tenpence per pound and the Canadian at sevenpence.