DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 135 



dairymen. We chose Frank S. Adams, believing him to be 

 better qualified for that job than anyone else. Many others 

 all over New England joined in the movement, so that an 

 organization was perfected and the dairy interests presented a 

 solid front before the Commission, which was the means of 

 bringing about what seems to be a fair and just rate to all ship- 

 pers of milk and cream. I will not go into this in detail, as I 

 have asked Mr. Adams for a report on the matter. 



The next important event, and one in which every dairyman 

 in Maine was interested, either directly or indirectly, was the 

 effort of the New England Milk Producers' Association to 

 induce the milk contractors of Boston and other Massachusetts 

 cities to give a price for the farmers' milk which would be in 

 keeping with the present high cost of grain and farm labor, 

 so that there might be a reasonable margin of profit in the 

 dairy business. By special invitation, Mr. Adams and I at- 

 tended the directors' meeting of the New England Milk Pro- 

 ducers' Association in Boston, when the demands were formu- 

 lated, after a careful study and discussion of the situation, 

 which brought about the so-called milk strike. The fight was a 

 long and hard one. Milk contractors immediately went up 

 one cent a quart and one cent a pint on the price of their milk 

 to the consumer ; but only wanted to give the farmers one-third 

 of that rise in price, and if the farmer had only kept still, that 

 is about the proportion that he would have received — one-third, 

 aigainst two-thirds to the contractor. But the farmer did not 

 keep still ; he had several things to say and he said them. He 

 :^aid that in the past few years, with the steady increase in the 

 price of labor and with the increasing demands that were made 

 by the contractors — which required more labor, he was not 

 making in the dairy business the percentage of profit that he 

 should from the capital invested ; he said that the cost of the 

 cow had doubled in the past few years ; he said that, with the 

 present extreme scarcity and high price of help and the ex- 

 tremely high price of grain, a correspondingly higher price for 

 dairy products must come. It was simply a fight for existence. 

 Thanks to the able generalship of Richard Pattee, secretary of 

 the Producers' Association, with President Colby and a small 

 army of intensely loyal men in the field, the farmers won, and 

 there is not a dairvman in Maine so remote that he will not 



