salary, and lodge and board in the house, representing therefore a
considerable outlay. The cheese, when made and sent to market, fluctuates
of course in price: it may be as low as fourpence a pound wholesale; it
may go as high as sixpence. Fourpence a pound wholesale will not pay for
the making; sixpence will leave a profit; but of late the price has gone
rather to the lower than the higher figure. A few years since, when the
iron industries flourished, this kind of cheese had a good and ready sale,
and there was a profit belonging to it; but since the iron trade has been
in so depressed a condition this cheese has sold badly. The surplus milk
consequently brings no profit, and is only made into cheese because it
shall not be wasted, and in the hope that possibly a favourable turn of
the cheese market may happen. Neither the summer cheese nor the summer
milk is bringing him in a fortune.

Meantime the hay is spoiling in the fields. But a few years ago, when
agricultural prices were inflated, and men's minds were full of
confidence, he recollects seeing standing grass crops sold by auction for
5_l_. the acre, and in some cases even higher prices were realised. This
year similar auctions of standing grass crops hardly realised 30_s_. an
acre, and in some instances a purchaser could not be found even at that
price. The difference in the value of grass represented by these prices is
very great.

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.