l86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



room would not begin to hold the people that would be here. 



The President. Mr. Secretary, will you please take the 

 chair? 



I am greatly interested in this question. I cannot keep still. 

 I have traveled from Harlem to the Battery many a night, 

 almost all night long, trying to sell milk in the city of New 

 York. I commenced more than thirty years ago. I know 

 pretty well regarding the selling and marketing of milk in the 

 big city of New York, or in the New York as it is today, taking 

 in the outside cities and all. I know pretty well how the thing 

 works from my own individual experience. I have sold milk 

 there, and to do it have gone without sleep, gone without my 

 meals, gone cold and hungry many a time. I did it when I 

 could not travel by the horse cars, nor by the elevated cars, 

 nor by the subway cars, or by anything of that kind, but when 

 I had to travel on my feet from one house to another to sell 

 my milk. Now how did I ever do it ? You talk about getting 

 good milk. I would go to a customer and tell him I had good 

 milk to sell. The man would ask my price. I would talk 

 with him a while, and from all of his remarks would judge that 

 he was an honest man, and was willing to pay for good milk. 

 An arrangement would be made that I would deliver him good 

 milk in good shape or he need not take it. Now I have had 

 many such cases where a man would receive the milk and 

 would distribute it for a little time. Then somebody around 

 back side of him somewhere would find out that he was getting 

 perhaps a little more for his milk than they were selling theirs 

 for, and they would go to the girl that provided the pail in the 

 morning and oflfer to leave a little milk. They would leave it 

 for a few times in that quart pail. They, perhaps, would take 

 the cream from two or three other quarts that belonged to 

 other people and put it into this one quart for a few times 

 as a sample of what they were able to furnish, and at the same 

 time they would be selling perhaps a half a cent a quart under 

 the other. They would do that sort of thing with the customers 



