No. 4.] MILK SUPPLY OF CITIES. 71 



The State Board of Health examined 3,551 samples last 

 year, 287 warning notices were sent out, and finally 76 

 complaints were entered in court ; of these, 63 resulted in 

 conviction. Half of these cases were for milk below 11 per 

 cent of solids. In 1893 the Cambridge milk inspector took 

 1,882 samples of milk; 26 were not of standard quality, 

 and, after sending out warnings and following the cases up, 

 8 complaints were entered in court. In Lowell in the same 

 year there were 1,258 inspections; 26 warnings that milk 

 was below the standard were sent out ; in almost every case 

 they caused an improvement in the quality of milk sold, 

 and, out of 1,258 samples taken, 17 cases were entered in 

 court. The Boston milk inspector, for the year ending 

 Feb. 28, 1894, reported 13,623 samples of milk examined, 

 out of which 267 prosecutions resulted. These figures, 

 which include all the adulterated cases, show what slight 

 danger there is of prosecution. I took at random one of 

 the Boston milk contractor's books, and found that out 

 of 1,000 analyses there were 58 instances when the milk 

 had been so bad as to call for letters of complaint. 



Third. — " Under the law an honest man may be branded 

 as an adulterater of milk." This is similar to the above. 

 At hearings before legislative committees, where an attempt 

 is made to reduce the standard, we are occasionally treated 

 to sympathy-stirring portrayals of the man of high stand- 

 ing in his town, very likely a deacon in the church, who is 

 summarily dragged into court, because, forsooth, an inno- 

 cent cow happened one day to give milk of less than 13 per 

 cent solids ; and for this temporary delinquency on the part 

 of the cow we are told that the exemplary citizen is branded 

 on court records as one who has deliberately adulterated 

 milk with the purpose of swindling his fellow man. 



There is a theoretical possibility of such things. It is 

 true that the law makes no distinction between milk below 

 standard naturally and that below standard through the 

 artifice of man. But, between the average quality of milk, 

 the leeway required by the courts and the prevailing sys- 

 tem of sending out warnings, the danger of prosecution, as 

 shown under another head, is extremely microscopic. It is 



