130 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



We have, indeed, in respect of this matter, been strangely neglectful 

 in our own country. Our kinsmen beyond the Atlantic have shown 

 themselves far more wide awake to the necessity of the case. In the 

 Final Report of the Departmental Committee on the Production and 

 Distribution of Milk, Lord Astor, presiding, referred to the beneficent 

 action, taken with remarkably happy effect, in this matter in New 

 York. That State, still more the city, of New York has indeed done 

 excellently. However, our Canadian Provinces, and such cities in 

 them as Toronto, Brantford, Hamilton, and some others, have been 

 no less active and successful. Seeing that we have now at length, 

 late in the day, entered upon the same path of reform, a brief account 

 of what has actually been done in America may be not out of place. 



Inquiry has shown that there are a whole number of causes of 

 contamination, among which, however, some defect or impurity in 

 the cow, as observed, stands first. To put a stop to this scourge, 

 a Milk Act was passed in the State of New York in March, 1914, 

 which, of course, it is for the municipalities to apply by the addition 

 of such bye-laws as appear called for to them. The Act is an em- 

 powering Act. The matter took practically the same course in 

 Canada, where Milk Acts have been passed in various Provinces, 

 among such — and with admirable effect — in Ontario. And in 

 consequence of this, mortality and the number of cases of sickness 

 have promptly gone down to a very notable extent. The effect 

 produced in Toronto has already been mentioned. In New York 

 City, where in 1898 the death rate of children under five years was 

 672 per 10,000 population, by 1916 the figure had been reduced to 

 336. The general death rate for typhoid was 3*1 and -4 for the same 

 two years respectively. For diphtheria and croup, distinctly 

 children's diseases, the rate in the latter year was only one-third of 

 what it had been in the former. As between the two years named, 

 the general death rate had been reduced from 202*6 to 138 - 9, the 

 latter being almost the lowest death rate in the world. These surely 

 are results worth noting. 



At the same time, so far from adversely affecting the sale of milk, 

 the improvement in its quality had increased the consumption, 

 showing that people are quite content to pay higher prices for their 

 milk, and consume a larger quantity, when they can have confidence 

 in its sanitary quality. Whereas in 1898 the quantity of milk sold 

 in New York was about 8,000,000 40-quart cans, by 1915 it had risen 

 to 20,000,000 cans, that is, roughly, 2\ times the former quantity, 

 whereas the population had not reached the double of what it had 

 been ; and although the service spoken of as a matter of course 



