EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 285 



A POPULAR DISCUSSION OF PURE MILK SUPPLY. 



i;V C. E. MARSHALL. 



Bulletiu 183. — Bacteriological Department. 



The writer has been urged by many practical dairymen, butter-makers and cheese- 

 makers, to prepare a short treatise on the above subject, tliat the milk producer 

 shall be able to understand the importance of securing pure milk, not only for city 

 consumers, but for the purpose of making butter and cheese. No class of dairy 

 operators so fully appreciate the A^alue of pure milk as the butter-makers and 

 cheese-makers who are engaged in factories where the patrons control affairs and the 

 men whom they perhaps employ are obliged to take what they furnish them. The city 

 consumers find much fault concerning their milk, but imfortunately thej^ are largely 

 to blame for the defects of their own milk supply. They expect that a pure milk is 

 obtained with Tis little expense as the diluted solutions of filth which they now use. 

 By their own penuriousness they ask the milkman to bring them this grade of milk. 

 Why then should they find so much fault? 



^iy words are for those wlio supply milk to cities, to creameries, to cheese factories, 

 and if those who are supplying milk to their own families are ready for a word of 

 warning, I will include them within this list. 



Fortunately there are a few milk producers in the State who are making serious 

 efiorts to secure a pure milk and they are included among the most successful in 

 Michigan. Success in the making of butter and cheese, as well as in the furnishing 

 of milk to cities, will as inevitably follow as day the dark and ding}' night, and 

 whether one makes a financial success of it will be dependent upon himself as it is 

 at present, but carrying into eti'ect the more advanced ideas will require greater 

 skill and knowledge than are needed in simply milking in dirt and filth. 



Most of our ideas in regard to the handling of milk have come to us via tradition. 

 Our fathers used milk as we have it, milked it in the same way, and, so far as we 

 know, did not die from its use. We trust that they did not. Our fathers lived in a 

 one-roomed log house, but we are scarcely willing to follow their examples. Yet when 

 we consider what some of our ancestors did, we are put to shame that we have not 

 moved faster or learned more. A short time since, it was my fortune to listen to a 

 lady much interested in dairy problems, who stated that her great grandfather had 

 sold milk in bottles to people in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, nearly two hundred 

 years ago. His neighbors laughed at him, as they do in these modern times, but he 

 deserves a monument for his wonderful insight. With the abundance of facts at our 

 disposal, it seems strange that we should continue to do what we recognize to be 

 wrong. 



The conditions of life as it existed then were somewhat dilTerent from those found 

 now. Milk was not shipped from great distances to supply large centers of population. 

 Usually the milk was consumed witliin a reasonable number of hours after drawing. 

 Butter and cheese were not made for the purpose of sending thousands of miks. 

 The exchange of dairy products was very limited compared with present commerce. 

 In the early days of this country, farmers sent their surplus butter to the nearest 

 store, where it was mixed with the products of a hundred other farms, barreled 

 and shipped to the nearest city of any size. The storekeepers, in preparing this 

 butter, would work over the entire amount at their disjiosal, salt it to suit their taste 

 and pack it. Now such methods are employed by a few firms which buy only the poorest 

 grades of butter found upon the market, at a few cents per pound, work it over with 

 fresh milk, salt it and color it and put it again upon the market as a high grade 

 butter. Several modified inethods are used in renovating butter to render it fit for 

 consumption. If all ?nade good butter, what would become of these firms? Now, no 



