At that time Quaker Hill was the most prosperous community for many miles around. A description of its industries will be found elsewhere, in Chap. IV, Part I. The coming of the railroad changed the whole aspect of things. The demand for milk to be delivered by farmers at the railroad station every day, and sold the next day in New York, began at once. It soon became the most profitable occupation for the farmers and the most profitable freight for the railroad. Eleven years after the first train entered Pawling came the war, with inflated prices. The farmer found that no use of his land paid him so much cash as the "making of milk," and thereafter the raising of flax ceased, grain was cultivated less and less, except as it was to be used in the feeding of cattle, and even the fatting of cattle soon had to yield to the lowered prices occasioned by the importation of beef from western grazing lands. The making of butter and cheese, with the increased cost of labor on the farms, was abandoned, that the milk might be sold in bulk to the city middleman. The time had not come, however, in which farmers or their laborers imported condensed milk, or used none. Quaker Hill farmers lived too generously and substantially for that; but they ceased, during the Civil War, when milk was bought "at the platform" for six cents a quart, to make butter or cheese. Thus the Harlem Railroad transformed Quaker Hill from a community of diversified farming, producing, manufacturing, selling, consuming, sufficient unto itself, into a locality of specialized farming. Its market had been Poughkeepsie, twenty-eight miles away, over high hills and indifferent roads. Its metropolis became New York City, sixty-two miles away by rail and four to eight miles by wagon road.