526 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



line hindrances, falls far short of giving its entire product to the metrop- 

 olis. Within the area which makes up this shed, there are of necessity 

 many creameries, several condensaries, and a few cheese factories. Other 

 large cities vie with Detroit also in getting milk from this territory, 

 notably Toledo, Cleveland and Chicago which lie upon the border of 

 this milk shed and toward which milk and cream may be directed with 

 every favorable turn in price. The cities of Flint, Port Huron, Jackson, 

 Ypsilanti, Mt. Clemens, Adrian, Ann Arbor, Pontiac and Monroe are 

 squarely within the Detroit milk shed itself and secure jjart or all of 

 their milk supplies in competition with the metropolis. The evils in 

 city milk price control, which arise from the fact of so large a number of 

 competitors for the same supply, will be pointed out more fully in the 

 later discussion of the milk contract. 



The gathering and moving of milk over so large an area as com- 

 prises the Detroit milk shed is naturally a task of no small size. The 

 work must not only be done rapidly, in order that the milk may not 

 become over-exposed, but it must be done in a cleanly way and it must 

 be done as cheaply as possible. It is demanded by consumers of milk 

 that their supply not only shall be pre-cooled by the dairyman but that 

 it shall also remain cool until delivered, and these services add no small 

 burden to the expense of milk gathering and delivering. Milk may be 

 said to be sold customarily at the dealer's receiving station or shipping 

 platform. This is true even though the control of the country milk 

 haulers themselves is in the hands of the milk dealer, who arranges the 

 routes and charges the producer with the cost of hauling. 



The shipping point, whether ujion the railroad or upon the interurban, 

 has at least a platform from which the heavy cans can be more easily 

 loaded into the waiting car. At important shipping points the large 

 city milk dealers usually place receiving stations, which, in some in- 

 instances, are small scale copies of what the city milk plant is itself. 

 Customarily, at all these stations, milk from the hauling wagons is 

 received and the used cans washed before returning to the farm. In 

 all of them also, there are storage facilities for holding milk until ship- 

 ment to the city takes place; also testing appliances and business offices 

 for the city dealer's agent. But in many of them, too, there are also 

 appliances for butter-making, cheese-making, milk powder manufacturing 

 and milk condensing. These facilities serve the very necessary purpose 

 of using up the surplus of milk not needed by tlie dealer for city trade, 

 but which, owing to contracts, tlie producer has the right to deliver. No 

 small saving is in this way made by the local milk station, since much 

 milk is kept by these means from shipment to the city at tlie heavy 

 charges for rail carriage and city haulage. 



The trip to the city is sometimes made by the use of especially planned 

 cars with especial cooling and handling outfits, but more often it is made 

 through the use of the baggage ear of the ordinary fast passenger train 

 or interurbans. Motor trucks in the cases of the shorter hauls are be- 

 coming very acute rivals to the interurbans and railroads in their milk 

 carrying business. 



