234 CITY MILK SUPPLY 



Sweet cream is bought on the butterfat or butterfat and skim-milk 

 basis. 



Tendency to Concentration. Milk producers and milk consumers 

 shrewdly discuss whether the milk contractors are so organized locally 

 and nationally as to constitute a monopoly. It is claimed that a few 

 big dealers have so manipulated things that they can dictate to the 

 farmer the price at which he shall sell milk, and to the consumer what he 

 shall pay for it. It is intimated that the contractor's profits are inordi- 

 nate and that his high prices to consumers have curtailed the consump- 

 tion of milk and his low prices to the farmers have caused them to produce 

 less and, therefore, more expensively. 



Some producers hold that the schedules of prices put out from time 

 to time by the big dealers are so similar that they indicate collusion in 

 fixing the price of milk, and that unfair methods of competition are 

 resorted to such as, at loss, underselling the small dealer in the city and 

 outbidding him in the country till his business is ruined and he is com- 

 pelled to quit. This belief that coercive policies are used has in a man- 

 ner been strengthened by the Boston Chamber of Commerce's arraign- 

 ment of the leased car system and its subsequent discontinuance by the 

 Interstate Commerce Commission. Certain leaders of the producers 

 believe that the only way the dairy farmer can secure fair prices is to cease 

 dealing as individuals with the contractors and sell his milk through various 

 sorts of farmer's unions. The growth of this feeling has led milk producers 

 to precipitate great milk strikes in Chicago, St. Louis, Boston and New 

 York that have attracted national attention both among dairy farmers 

 and consumers. It has led J. J. Dillon, State Commissioner of Foods 

 and Markets of New York State, to propose that a plan in use in 

 Denmark be followed. He advises that in every dairy section of 

 the State the producers should form a local association and legally 

 appoint it the agent for the sale of their milk, thereby putting all the milk 

 of a district into a single agency for sale and making it impossible for 

 the members to sell their milk personally. The local organizations would 

 be federated in a single agency for the sale and distribution of milk. 

 Acting on this idea the Dairyman's League of New York State has noti- 

 fied its members that it is in a position to market their milk under existing 

 contracts with producers and has designated the New York State Depart- 

 ment of Foods and Markets as the exclusive agent for the sale of milk. 

 Thus the members of the association delegate their authority to sell their 

 milk to the association of which they are members and the association 

 concentrates this authority in the State Department. This action is 

 believed by Dillon to be an excellent move because the Department has 

 the power of the State to enforce its rulings and to protect the dealers 

 who buy the milk for distribution. This plan is most radical and whether 

 it will succeed or not will be observed with interest. That it should be 



