No. 4.] MILK SUPPLY OF CITIES. 55 



the milk is received. The trains arrive as a rule during the 

 forenoon, chiefly between ten and twelve o'clock, regardless 

 of the distance they have run. The milk is loaded on the cars 

 the same morning that it arrives in Boston, but is usually 

 the milk of the evening and morning previous, though some 

 places are so situated that the morning's milk is shipped on 

 the day of production. On arrival the milk is taken from 

 the car or platform by peddlers, and most of it is carried to 

 their milk-houses, where it is run through a mixer, put in 

 quart and pint individual cans, and stored on ice until the 

 next morning, when it is delivered. Thus the milk of Mon- 

 day morning and Monday night — sometimes of Tuesday 

 morning — is put on the car Tuesday morning, reaches Bos- 

 ton about noon, is kept on ice at the peddlers' places of 

 business Tuesday afternoon and night, and is delivered 

 Wednesday morning, twenty-four to forty-eight hours old 

 before it reaches the consumers. 



One peculiarity of the way in which the Boston milk busi- 

 ness is done is that it gives steadiness to the market and pre- 

 vents any excessive supplies from breaking the price. It 

 therefore has advantages, though it causes complaint among 

 some producers. The contractors, instead of operating like 

 wholesalers in other lines of business, who buy what they 

 think their trade will take, contract six months in advance for 

 all the milk their farmers will bring to the cars. They agree 

 to pay the stipulated price for what they can sell, and for an 

 addition of five or ten per cent carried for their convenience 

 to meet the varying demands of trade. The surplus above 

 these amounts is made into butter, and the farmers are paid 

 for the surplus milk what the butter is worth, less the cost of 

 manufacture. The motive for buying in this way — usually 

 more than can be sold as milk — is to control the supply as 

 far as possible and keep competing milk off the market ; as 

 the contractors hold back the milk they cannot sell, they 

 prevent a glut and any weakening of prices. The contrac- 

 tors claim that this also helps many farmers, who prefer to 

 sell all the milk they can make, even if they get less for it. 



The contractors, for ease in computing the amount to be 

 paid for the surplus, reduce it to a percentage of the whole, 



