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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9164, 20 September 1888, Page 4

The prominence that is now given to the capabilities of New Zealand for the production of butter and cheese for the English market should be regarded as cne of the moso marked symptoms of the coming dawn. It is not merely among ourselves that this importance attaches to the industry, but the visit of sucli a man as Mr. Meadows, as representative of one of the largest importing firms in the United Kingdom, is a visible expression of the interest that is awakening respecting the possibilities of the fertile soil and juicy grasses of New Zealand. The greatest living authority on cheese, Professor Long, has said that New Zealand can compete in the English markets "against the world," and this he affirms, as he says, " with an intimate knowledge of the countries which now hold the market." And Professor Arnold says that New Zealand is a dairy country par excellence, that as nothing can equal grass-feeding for the production of butter, a country which can grow English grasses as New Zealand grows them, and can keep the cattle thriving on them in the open air all the year round, may well " rival England and Europe in producing the finest butter and cheese in the world." Now the testimony is unimpeachable that for dairy produce our colony is capable of beating down opponents as fully as with our frozen mutton, and as England imports from over sea over a hundred thousand tons of butter in the year, or. put in other words, as much as would fill a hundred trading ships of a thousand tons burthen each, it is a manifest absurdity to say that New Zealand farmers have no market for their produce. Indeed, with the light that is dawning on us in relation to this subject, it seems almost impossible to exaggerate the future that is presented to our agricultural settlers. Here is an industry in which, by the simplest form of co-operation, ;he humblest settler, with two or three, or half-a-dozen cows, can join, while the wealthiest and most extensive cattle owner can swell the expoi t without the faintest possibility of making the slightest appreciable difference on the market. Indeed, there seems no reasoa why the productive returns of our great staple, wool, should not be rivalled by those of our cheese and butter : while there will be the added advantage that the profits of the industry, instead of being confined to a few fortunate classes, will reach and be distributed among the whole body of the people. We are often too much disposed to cast our eyes about in search of a gold mine or some other extraordinary cause for a big boom, but in the English butter market we have a mine of wealth that if efficiently wrought would be productive of more general and lasting gains than a dozen gold mines, with all their unsettling and harassing consequences. And this mine we have already discovered, and to our hand, and the only " refractory ore" we have to fight with is the prejudice or dilatoriness or slowness to learn among ourselves, of those—perhaps still imbued with the despairing sentiment that "farming will not pay'' —who will not accept and act on the conditions of success that are so emphatically and explicitly laid down by every one that is capable of speaking with authority on the subject. Absolute uniformity in colour, in flavour, and in texture is the passport to the British market; and if our settlers, with the assurance that New Zealand butter can compete successfully against that from any country on the face of the globe, do not set themselves to meet the conditions, by combination and cooperation, then they certainly deserve to be thrown back into the dreary monotony of the past, and to have the pleasant ditty ot " farming will not pay" made for all time the lullaby of their hopes.