EDITOR'S TABLE. 



Ill 



temptation. His evil opportunities are 

 too many for him. Nor is it of much 

 use to preach to him from the door-steps 

 concerning the wickedness of his ways ; 

 because he will ask you to read from 

 the newspaper you have in your hand the 

 last reports about the rings, frauds, 

 corruptions, stealing and plunder on 

 a grand scale, in high places, and on 

 the part of representative men whom 

 the people delight to honor. Pecula- 

 tion, misappropriation, overreaching, 

 and sharp practice, he tells you, are the 

 order of the day the rule, the fashion, 

 and that a man "might as well be out 

 of the world as out of the fashion." He 

 tells you that business rivalries are des- 

 perate, that men must live, and that the 

 world must be taken as it is. The milk- 

 man is of opinion that, if the business 

 standards of the community could be 

 raised to a level with his own practice, 

 a long stride would be taken toward the 

 millennium. He refers you to a report 

 to the Board of Health in this city, in 

 which it is stated that chalk, flour, 

 starch, emulsion of almonds, sugar, 

 gum, dextrine, borax, turmeric, annotto, 

 soda, and sheep's brains, have been used 

 for doctoring milk; but that, in hun- 

 dreds of examinations of milk furnished 

 to the citizens of this metropolis, none 

 of these ingredients have been detected. 

 Water, to be sure, is alleged to have 

 been used, but what is more wholesome ? 

 and what are the secluded spring and 

 the ready pump for, if not to supply it? 

 He reminds you that societies are organ- 

 ized all over the world to get people to 

 drink more of it ; that milk is mainly 

 aqueous, to begin with ; that there is no 

 natural standard of the proportions of 

 this constituent; that the business of 

 dispensing it is a detestable drudgery; 

 that the milkman must be astir and 

 abroad while other people slumber; 

 that he has to rout the lazy servant- 

 girls with unearthly screeches, and then 

 wait till they are pleased to make their 

 appearance ; that there is waste with 

 every pint delivered ; that bills are hard 



to collect ; that though his conscience 

 be as white as the contents of his can, 

 yet is he ever charged with cheating; 

 that his rascally competitor is under- 

 selling him and he perfectly understands 

 the cause; and, finally, that the losses 

 and drawbacks of business have to be 

 covered in ditferent ways, while, if a 

 little innocuous water is added to the 

 milk, nobody is worse for it, and nobody 

 can find it out. 



Now, it is useless to reason with the 

 milkman, or to exhort him to raise his 

 conduct to the standard of pure and ab- 

 solute rectitude, for, even if he should 

 repent, he would be pretty sure to back- 

 slide. Yet the case against him is not 

 to be given up ; where homilies fail, 

 science comes to the rescue ; and, if its 

 indications are followed, the milkman 

 and his customer may be brought into 

 tolerably harmonious relations. 



How far the craft have wandered 

 away from the paths of rectitude in this 

 region, and how their venial transgres- 

 sions swell into an immense daily burden 

 upon the community, are well illustrated 

 by the following statement from Prof. 

 Chandler's report to the Metropolitan 

 Board of Health in 1870. He says : 



" The average percentage of pure milk, 

 in the adulterated article with which the 

 city is supplied, is 73.28 ; or, in other words, 

 for every three quarts of pure milk, there is 

 added one quart of water. It was stated at 

 the convention of milk-producers and deal- 

 ers, held at Croton Falls, in March, 1870, 

 that the total amount of milk supplied to 

 the cities of New York and Brooklyn, from 

 the surrounding country, was about 120,- 

 000,000 quarts per annum. To reduce this 

 to the quality of our city supply, requires an 

 addition of 40,000,000 quarts of water, which 

 at 10 cents per quart, costs us the snug sum 

 of $4,000,000 annually, or about 12,000 per 

 day." 



Now, granting that there is a great 

 deal of money spent in New York, in 

 worse ways than in buying water at ten 

 cents a quart retail, it is still desirable 

 to introduce more equity into these lac- 

 tic transactions. The milk-consumer is 



