EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 535 



In the third place, cities have accepted everywhere, the responsibility 

 for a milk supply to their citizens. This they have done through for- 

 bidding private persons to keep cows within city limits and thus supply- 

 ing themselves with milk. Restraints of this sort always throw it upon 

 the public to make good the hardships caused by such action. 



In the fourth place, city action is necessary in the case of milk in 

 order to guard city health. Milk may be a bane as well as a blessing. 

 Its rich, opaque, liquid substance may make a perfect culture for vast 

 numbers of malady carrying bacteria. The sanitation of milk has 

 indeed been the one side of this food which has had public interest and 

 respect, and as a result, milk retailers are usuall}^ licensed. 



Fifth, there is no other waj to get a sa.tisfactory supply of milk for 

 a city than through city action. The consumer may be left free to buy 

 at will most of the foods which go to his table but this is not the case 

 with milk, Fcav food stuOs may be more tricky and the consumer is 

 wholly without light as to the quality, grade and value of milk unless 

 the city gives him help. No siugie consumer, for example, should be 

 asked to own and use the chemical and bacterial tests by which good 

 milk is told, when cities acting for the whole may own and apply these 

 tests at the minimum of trouble and expense. A city need of this 

 sort may very properly, therefore, become the object of a commission's 

 care and effort. 



THE JUST MILK TRICE. 



The second task which the commission took up was that of making 

 milk prices which should be just to the consumer, the dealer, and the 

 producer. Here it was soon plain that the corner stone of a just milk 

 price, in the judgment of the commission, was "costs of production" — • 

 using this term in the broad sense as including also costs of marketing. 

 No other sound conclusion, indeed would have been possible. Ko con- 

 sumer is wronged in payiug fully for all the real costs, expenses and 

 pains which have been spent in fetching him the thing he uses. The 

 use by the city of a food necessity like milk merits the complete repay- 

 ment to the producer of every actual sacrifice, expense or cost made in 

 the making and care of this milk if the city hopes for an adequate supply 

 and quality to be kept up. Happily for tlie commission the price slogan 

 of the day ''costs of production plus a reasonable profit" was very widely 

 believed in. 



The commission had its first meeting in the Board of Commerce rooms 

 in Detroit, November 2.3, 1917, and held an open session for five days. 

 Representative members from both the producers' and the dealers' 

 associations were at hand to inform the commission as to costs in both of 

 these sides of the milk business and much discussion took place. Of 

 far greater help, however, than this general testimony upon costs, were 

 two other sources of information, the use of which by the commission 

 has made its findings upon milk prices fairly final. These were a Study 

 in Costs of Milk Production made by the Dairy Section of the Michigan 

 Experiment Station, and a Cost of Milk Distribution Report made by a 

 firm of certified accountants from the bookkeeping records of the leading 

 milk dealers in Detroit. 



The study in costs of production had reached back over a period of 

 five years prior to its use by the commission. It had covered during this 



