EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 521 



regard to milk products on the part of consumers is extremely marked. 



The city demand for milk shows a ready reaction to changes in price, 

 falling off with high prices and increasing with lowered ones. No one 

 knows exactly the relation between price changes and demand shifts yet 

 it is certain that milk holds no fixed place in the consumer's demand 

 schedule as does, for example, salt. Squeamishness on the part of the 

 consumer with regard to milk is perhaps more marked than with any 

 other food product, yet the wishes of each consumer must be squarely 

 met if a maximum marketing of milk is to result. 



There is no wastage of rind or core or bone in milk and, as almost 

 universally used, there is no household expense in preparing it for the 

 table. Furthermore it is used as an enrichment or flavor with almost 

 every kind of food. It is a product of the cold climates and the moist 

 earth regions. The cities of the fiftieth meridian, reaching from Seattle 

 and San Francisco on the West, to Petrograd and Moscow on the East, 

 furnish the markets in which most of the fluid milk is sold. It will be 

 seen at once then that within the world belt thus described are to be 

 found nearly all the great centers of wealth and population so that milk is 

 to be considered fortunate in having such a desirable market. 



The growth of large cities in fact has given the fluid milk business its 

 chance for growth, since villages and the open country are usually self 

 sufficieait in respect to a milk supply. The firm place which milk holds 

 in our dietary, however, as a food which is good for grown people but 

 indispensable for children, makes the problem of supplying a city ex- 

 tremely difficult and comi)lex. Furthermore the problem is helped in 

 no wise through the use of substitutes. Human wit has thus far found 

 nothing which takes the place of pure milk, and human forethought 

 must apparently take the path of breaking down obstacles between 

 country and town rather than attempt the finding of milk substitutes. 



The milk business, like that of railroading, cold storage or motor car 

 manufacturing, is a distinctly modern business. One could scarcely 

 think of milk handling in a commercial sense without pasteurization 

 appliances, butter fat and bacterial tests, by-product utilization, dis- 

 tributing plants, etc., yet all of these are strictly discoveries or in- 

 ventions of the past half century. 



The consumer wants his milk regularly delivered and in small quan- 

 tities. It must be regular because his uses of it are of the daily re- 

 curring kind. He favors a delivery plan rather than a carry scheme 

 because the unit of purchase — usually a quart bottle — is too small to 

 warrant the trip for it by the consumer himself, and he wishes it in 

 small lots because he seldom owns a storage place for such a highly 

 perishable commodity as milk. 



