Another of the great advantages possessed by some of our foreign competitors is the very much better supply of feeding stuffs and their very considerably lower cost. Take the United States, for instance, the enormous supply of maize alone enables American pigmen to manufacture pork at a cost which enables the packers to land bacon, hams, and lard on the British shores which our home pig producers cannot approach. Although it cannot be said that the cost of labour is less in the States than in England, yet there are some countries from which we import pork products where the labour is far more plentiful and less costly. In the future the allowance for labour will have to be on a more liberal scale than hitherto when estimating the cost of producing pork, unless the number of persons owning and occupying small holdings is greatly increased. It has been stated that our home producers of pork and bacon will obtain a considerable advantage in the future in that the freight on the imported meats will be so much higher. It is most probable that this will increase the expense of landing bacon, etc., on our markets; on the other hand, as we import so large a proportion of the pig fattening foods, the cost of food will most likely be increased to quite the same if not to a greater extent. The only plan to reduce this extra expense will be to lessen the outlay on imported foods by paying more attention to the growth of various foods suitable for pigs, attending more carefully to our pigs and feeding them on common-sense lines. In these particulars there is room for much improvement in many piggeries. By reducing the cost of the production of pork and by the more general adoption of the system of home curing we shall not only obtain our bacon at less cost, but we shall have a far greater amount of the finest quality of bacon and hams generally available. We imagine that the reader of the earlier portion of this book will experience little difficulty in producing fine quality pork at a minimum cost--it will then remain to cure and dry it properly. The fattened pig should not be fed for some twenty-four hours before it is killed; after slaughter the carcase should remain hanging until it is thoroughly cooled. The manner of cutting up will depend on the custom in the particular district. In some parts of the country the pig is split down, the head, feet, and tail taken off, the leaf and kidneys and the skirt taken out, the loin and the crop with a certain proportion of the lean cut off, and in some cases the shoulder blade is drawn; after the necessary trimming a Wiltshire side remains.