128 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



stances be depended upon, which makes of his husbandry a safe 

 and steady business, exempt from occasional " ups," to be, as a 

 rule, more than offset by calamitous " downs." To secure this, 

 he must be at the top of the market in respect of reliable quan- 

 tity. And to achieve such result he is in the best position of all 

 dealers. For, dealing with a host of contributors, he must of neces- 

 sity test and examine the incoming goods with scrupulous care ; and, 

 acting among fellows, he is in a position to do so with a degree of 

 authority commanding greater confidence among them than any 

 one else could hope for. 



The sellers are all in the same boat, and they know it. The 

 managing committee has no selfish ends to serve, such as might 

 conceivably be suspected of influencing an outside buyer ; but 

 only such as are of equal benefit to all. When the Danes, driven 

 out of the German market by Prince Bismarck, decided to 

 seek a place in the English market, they soon found out that, to 

 succeed there, they must beat their competitors, not only with 

 the quality of their goods, but also with the dependableness and 

 regularity of their supplies — butter and eggs, for instance — in 

 winter as well as in summer. They could not have accomplished 

 this without co-operation. And in their dealings co-operation first 

 of all exhibited its remarkable aptitude for studying " quality " 

 beyond the ordinary level. It was co-operative egg societies which 

 first introduced " candling," co-operative dairies, I think, which 

 first resorted to bacteriological testing, so as to make sure that 

 their milk would be a hygienically safe article. That innovation, 

 indeed, proved well worth its cost. For it secured to co-operative 

 dairying the recommendation of " the faculty," which counts for 

 something in the market. And such care for the quality of the 

 goods may be taken to bid fair to prove a valuable help to securing 

 a further great benefit of, indeed, unspeakable value to the public. 



Milk is our most nutritious, most indispensable, article of diet — 

 an article without which our children would grow up crippled, fore- 

 doomed to a feeble life and an early death. But milk, as we have 

 hitherto drunk it, is — like the biblical pot of pottage before it was 

 restored to sanitary condition by Elisha — charged with "death." 



Shortly before the War the frequent occurrence of epidemics 

 possibly to be attributed to milk, very naturally attracted the 

 attention of the authorities of New York State and City. A purely 

 partial examination of the literature of the twenty-five years ending 

 in 1917 has, in effect, shown that within that period 195 epidemics 

 of typhoid, 95 of scarlet fever, and 36 of diphtheria, to say nothing 



