534 



STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Commissions witli wide powers are a common remedy for public ills 

 and the Detroit Milk Commission took a place in the same class with 

 the many other food, fuel, industrial and war commissions by which 

 the public are served. It took upon itself at once through the force of 

 its membership the work of an executive board. ''Its first duty", so 

 an early report states, "was to see that Detroit had an adequate and 

 dependable supply of milk." It was to handle milk for Detroit like a 

 water board handles water, or a gas board, gas, and it was justified in 

 looking upon milk as a city utility to be handled in this way for the 

 following reasons: 



First, milk is a public utility to cities because it is universally used 

 upon the tables of city people. This popularity of milk is strikingly 

 shown by a report made to the Federal Bureau of Labor by a food 

 consumption survey board in 1903. In this report we find that among 

 the families studied — mostly workmen's families — 9G.61 per cent paid out 

 money for milk, while 76.49 per ceiit stands for the families buying 

 bread, the so-called "staff of life". (18th Annual Report, U. S. Bureau 

 of Labor, page 492493.) 



Second, milk is a public utility because babies cannot live without 

 it. No city could a\oid an abnormally high infant death rate, if it 

 lacked a supply of good milk. There are no substitutes for milk of any 

 sort in the dietary of the child, and there is no other adequate source 

 for a supply than that of the herd. 



Fig. 3. Bottle washing department of a large mil'.c plant. 



