DAIRY MEETING. IJI 



in vogue for so many years. It is rather hard to get a man to 

 change when he has been doing the same thing for dozens of 

 years. He dues not reaUze just what the benefits will be, but 

 provided he does change and installs the covered milk pail or 

 perhaps builds him a milk room a short distance from the sta- 

 ble, and builds an ice house, he will find that such improve- 

 ments will not cost him very much and he will see something 

 coming in, in return. At present the milk business is hardly a 

 business in which much more than a living can be made. In 

 Commissioner Buckley's remarks this morning he claimed that 

 he had been in the milk business for twenty years and there was 

 no great profit in that business. 1 find that to be the case all 

 over the State. Men say they can get a living at it, but it is notl 

 a business as it should be. The added cost on account of the 

 little extra labor required in the production of clean milk will 

 make the expense a little greater. A little more attention to 

 details is required, perhaps half an hour more of time in the 

 tie-up at milking time, to go over each one of the cows, and all 

 of this must go to the added cost. But when the public at large 

 understands thoroughly that all of this attention to details 

 means more expense, and also that they are getting milk at a 

 • very cheap price as compared with its food value and its cost 

 of production, and that the farmer has improved and they are 

 getting a clean, wholesome product, I see no reason why they 

 should not be willing to pay the farmer a little more for his 

 work. Very often it is said, and the farmer himself believes it, 

 that the inspection of his premises and of his milk is of no 

 benefit to him ; that the people are getting milk at a very cheap 

 price compared to what it costs to produce it, and that he is 

 not getting compensated for his work. That is all very true, 

 but the public, in turn, demands something from that farmer 

 before they will give him an increase in price. In order to get 

 that increase he has got to prove to them that his methods and 

 his product are better and more wholesome than they were 

 before he changed them. If in some community some one 

 dairyman should start ahead and act as a model for the com- 

 munity, and advertise that he was producing clean milk, and 

 place his cattle and his methods open for inspection of the 

 entire public, that man would get the price which he asked for 

 his milk ; gradually the other men would imitate him and in that 

 way the standard for that community would be raised. And 



