No. 4.] REPORT OF SECRETARY. ix 



Dairy products have brought good prices, there having been 

 a distinct increase in the price of milk for the Boston market 

 over previous years. This would seem, however, to have been 

 more than balanced by the increased cost of grain and the re- 

 duced supply of roughage, as indicated from the partial failure 

 of the corn and rowen crops, so that the net gain for the farmers 

 was very little if anything over former years. With the extreme 

 difficulty of securing farm help, and its high price, there would 

 seem to be the necessity of a still further increase in the price of 

 milk to the farmers, if the milk supply of our cities is to be main- 

 tained at the high standard already set and demanded by both 

 the consuming public and the law-enforcing agencies of the 

 Commonwealth. To the end that such an increase may be 

 secured, there should be a campaign of education in the food 

 value of milk and the cost of its production, so that the public 

 may come to recognize the necessity of paying a fair price for a 

 first-class product. Also, there is the duty upon the milk pro- 

 ducers of offering such a product that the consuming public 

 may have no reasonable ground for objection to paying the 

 price demanded. On the one hand there must be a fair recog- 

 nition of the scriptural teaching that "the laborer is worthy of 

 his hire," and on the other a full realization that it is not good 

 business to demand a first-class price for anything except a 

 first-class product. The greater proportion of the supposed 

 advance in the retail price of milk this time went to the farmers, 

 — a great improvement over the conditions of a year ago, when 

 four-fifths of the nominal advance of a cent a quart to the con- 

 sumer was appropriated by the contractors to their own uses. 

 This would appear to be indicative of an increased sense of re- 

 sponsibility to the producers on the part of the middlemen, and 

 of a desire to deal fairly with them. In all the history of past 

 agricultural development it has been shown that there is no 

 possibility of the production of the fruits of the earth by cor- 

 porate bodies, in the same manner that the fruits of man's in- 

 genuity are produced. On the other hand, the farmers have 

 never yet been able to combine successfully for the disposal of 

 their products to the consumers without the intervention of 

 middlemen. The greatest profit to both farmers and middle- 

 men has come when both classes have stood ready to recognize 

 the fact that they were mutually dependent on the other, and to 



