244 CITY MILK SUPPLY 



of health would like to pass ordinances requiring that all or a part of 

 the milk should be pasteurized but are deterred from doing so by the 

 fact that such an ordinance might put some men of a moderate amount of 

 capital out of business and might tend to drive a part of the business of 

 others to the large plant already equipped to pasteurize. Also there- are 

 cities which have no rnilk plant, that might support one if the milk of all 

 the dealers could be handled in a single plant. Out of these conditions 

 has grown the demand on the part of the public that the dealers shall 

 get together and erect a plant where all the milk shall be pasteurized, 

 cooled and stored or that a municipal plant shall be put up for the purpose. 

 Competition in the milk trade is so very keen that it no doubt will be 

 difficult to get dairymen to assent to either plan but there is strength 

 in the movement and it may succeed. 



The preparation of milk for the market varies in different city milk 

 plants. The smallest are merely depots where raw milk is received, 

 bottled and held at low temperature for delivery. In the largest, milk is 

 tested for odors, and flavor, and sediment, at the receiving platforms and 

 then dumped into mixing vats from which it passes through the clarifier 

 into standardizing vats where it is brought to the butterfat test which the 

 contractor has determined the milk he puts out to his trade shall have. 

 If the milk is not to be used at once it then goes to insulated cold storage 

 tanks where it is kept at low temperature until it is needed. Milk from 

 the standardizing vats or the storage tanks is pasteurized after which it is 

 put into cans for the wholesale, or into bottles for the retail trade. It is 

 then cooled at once to between 35 and 50F. and kept in refrigerators or 

 cold rooms till wanted for delivery. Most of the large plants are equipped 

 for the manufacture of milk beverages and for working up the milk that is 

 returned on the delivery wagons and all other surplus milk, as butter and 

 cheese. 



Classification of City Milk Plants. There no doubt is some difference 

 of opinion as to what sort of an establishment may properly be called a 

 city milk plant for some would restrict the term to plants that represent 

 a large investment of capital and handle large volumes of milk while others 

 would apply the term more generally. It seems that the name may be 

 given to any place where a regular business of preparing milk for the 

 retail trade is carried on. Accepting this view city milk plants may be 

 placed in two groups as follows: 



Group 1. Single-story plants: plants occupying a basement only; 

 plants occupying a ground floor and basement; plants occupying the 

 ground floor only. 



Group 2. Plants of more than one story. 



Basement Plants. Basement plants may be perfectly sanitary but 

 few are so. As a rule they are operated by small dealers with inadequate 

 capital and are located in the dealer's dwelling or in the buildings whose 



