THE MILK SUPPLY OF CITIES. 627 



THE MILK SUPPLY OF CITIES. 



By Prof. II. W. CONN. 



THE ever-growing needs of civilized communities constantly de- 

 mand new methods. At the time when the streets of Boston 

 may have been the actual cow paths which we are sometimes told 

 they represent, the milk problem did not exist. Every farmer 

 owned his cows, and if some of the people in the small communities 

 did not happen to own a cow there were plenty of these animals 

 in their neighborhood to furnish them with milk. But as our cities 

 have grown the farmer has been pushed back farther and farther 

 into the country, while the demand for milk in the cities has been 

 constantly increasing. The man of the city can no longer call upon 

 his neighbor for milk, but must depend upon some unknown farmer 

 living perhaps many miles away. In England the farmer still lives 

 somewhat close to the city, and as soon as one passes the city limits 

 he begins to find the fields and meadows covered with cows. Lon- 

 don and Berlin draw their immense milk supply chiefly from a 

 radius of seventy-five miles. In the United States, however, the 

 farmer does not live so close to the cities, and the demand for milk 

 is even greater than in Europe. Our cities must therefore depend 

 upon a wider range of territory. New York draws its milk from a 

 radius of some three hundred miles. It is easy to see that with such 

 conditions many new problems have arisen. These problems, so far 

 as they concern the obtaining of a sufficient quantity and the trans- 

 portation and preservation of the milk, have, from a business stand- 

 point, been pretty satisfactorily solved. The milk-supp)ly compa- 

 nies succeed in obtaining a sufficient supply at all seasons of the 

 year, and get it into the city in such a manner that when delivered 

 to the consumer, even though it be forty-eight hours old, it is in 

 tolerably good condition. But it is beginning to appear that the 

 problem, as concerns the consumer, is a somewhat serious one, and 

 that this problem has not yet been solved, nor is it likely to be 

 solved unless the consumer himself takes a direct interest in it. 



The problem of the milk supply in the smaller cities is quite 

 different from that of our larger cities. In the smaller cities, even 

 those with populations of one hundred thousand, there may be com- 

 monly found a number of milkmen who bring into the city the 

 milk from their own farms and personally distribute it. Such a 

 business is a small one, and the dealer and the producer may be 

 held directly responsible for the quality of the milk. In large 

 cities, however, the business is very different. The individual milk 

 dealer who brings in milk from his own farm has almost disappeared, 



