Cost of Food 1367 



masses of the people, nearly everybody owned his own cow and she fed 

 upon the public domain. Milk and butter produced under such con- 

 ditions cost nothing but labor, and that was largely furnished by the cow 

 herself in collecting her free pasturage. Now, the same products are 

 made almost exclusively out of forage and grain raised on land worth 

 from fifty to three hundred dollars an acre, and they are delivered to the 

 customer in costly packages, bearing frequently the name and guarantee 

 of the producer. 



" Then the cow and her calf cost next to nothing. Now they are not 

 only fed at large labor upon costly food, but they are housed in expensive 

 buildings, which the law as well as public sentiment demands must be 

 kept in sanitary condition. Then milk and butter were incidental outputs 

 of the home. Now they are the products of skilled labor, especially 

 trained. Cows good enough to be kept under such conditions are not had 

 for nothing, but represent something less than one out of three of the 

 total cow population born, and it is not strange that they cost from $60 

 to $120, or even much more if purely bred. 



" All this must raise the cost to the consumer, and still other elements 

 of cost are being added. We are now demanding, for example, the tuber- 

 culin test, which must raise still more the cost of both milk, and its 

 products, not only because of the cows destroyed by the test, but also 

 because the business is necessarily passing into the hands of better men. 

 The reader and the housewife should remember, too, that milk at 10 

 cents per quart and butter at 35 or 40 cents per pound are not more ex- 

 pensive than meat at 25 cents. 



' Someone has said that the time has come when to fire a cannon 

 represents the cost of a college education and to build a battleship costs 

 a university. These considerations will one day amend public policies, 

 but it will only increase the demand for bread, and now that we are 

 checking the agencies of human destruction, we must understand what 

 it will mean in population. Every life saved and every infant preserved 

 adds not only to numbers but to the average length of human life and, 

 correspondingly, to the demand for food. 



' I cannot see, therefore, any lasting relief from the prospect of per- 

 manent high prices for food. Improved methods of production will 

 defer the day and soften its coming, and reduced wages, consequent upon 

 a dense population, will result in a forced demand for a lessened amount 

 and a cheaper kind of food for the masses, and this, more than all other 

 causes, will keep prices in check. But back of it all lies the fact of the 

 pressure of population and the lessening fertility that no race yet has ever 



