■'.-> 



214 Ninth Annual Report of the 



distress of the tenement population of New York. It may be 

 that the natural law of supply and demand in time will correct 

 the conditions which now work to the disadvantage of both city 

 and country, but if philanthropists and social reformers could 

 induce some of the surplus labor of the great cities to seek 

 employment on the farms they would confer an immediate 

 benefit on all concerned. 



One of the chief needs of a State like this, nearly three- 



7 t, 



fourths of whose people live in cities and large towns, is an 

 adequate supply of pure milk. As in former years, my efforts 

 have been directed largely to this end. That the dairy interests 

 of the State are inadequate to meet the demands made upon 

 them is proved by the scarcity of the product, which always 

 occurs in summer. There is never a vear that we do not hear 

 of a milk famine in New York, and it is this condition which 

 furnishes the temptation and the excuse for adulteration of one 

 of the most important articles of food. 



Owing to the taking up of large tracts of near-by lands for 

 market gardening, the city of Rochester draws its milk supply 

 year after year from points farther and farther distant. This 

 results in an increase in the proportion of milk shipped into the 

 city by rail and a decrease in that drawn in on wagons and 

 peddled by the producers. This condition in itself fosters 

 adulteration, since a dairyman who might hesitate to deliver 

 impure milk to customers whom he personally knows is less 

 scrupulous in dealing with a middleman. 



During the winter and spring months of this year our agents 

 found that the milk delivered to consumers in this division was 

 almost uniformly of good quality. "With the advent of hot 

 weather, however, the usual number of cases of adulteration 

 was discovered. It has been urged in some cases, as in a 

 measure excusing dealers for selling milk below standard, that 

 they were compelled to adulterate it in order to supply all their 

 customers. In some cases the delinquents took refuge behind 

 the excuse that the milk produced by their cows was of poor 

 quality, but tests at the dairies in all instances disproved these 



