72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



not wholly wrong, however, that the law is just as it is on 

 this point. One court has said that there is no difference 

 between watering milk inside the cow and watering it out- 

 side of her. The Rhode Island supreme court, in a de- 

 cision sustaining a milk-standard law, says that " if a cow 

 habitually gives milk below standard, she is of no value 

 to her owner as a milk producer, unless he can sell her 

 milk to his unsuspecting neighbor for a price in excess 

 of its value, — a species of fraud which ought not to be 

 tolerated. The section is but a slight extension of the 

 provision which prohibits the sale of adulterated milk, 

 and, like that, was designed to protect the public against 

 imposition." 



There is one danger to milk producers which is common 

 to all occupations. All persons employing help are liable 

 for the acts of their employees, and hence a morally in- 

 nocent man may in a few extreme cases be legally guilty of 

 selling milk which has really been adulterated by the hand 

 of man, — some employee. A conscientious and high- 

 minded editor from Philadelphia was in Boston a few days 

 ago. While in that city something appeared in his paper 

 which an aggrieved party thought to be libellous, and on the 

 gentleman's return to his home he was arrested on a charge 

 ot criminal libel. Morally he was innocent, technically he 

 may have been guilty ; his arrest was one of the perils of 

 living and doing business. 



A case was noticed in a local paper a few weeks ago as 

 being so excessively aggravating as to call for an editorial 

 denunciation of the milk law. I found that the criticism of 

 the law was based merely on the fact that the convicted man 

 was of excellent standing in the community, — a man whom 

 every one respected and esteemed. Investigation showed 

 that he had received four warnings from the contractor to 

 whom he sold milk that it was below standard ; in spite of 

 that, it did not improve, but at length analysis disclosed 

 such a disproportion . between the solids not fat and the fat 

 that the conclusion was inevitable that the milk had been 

 watered. The case was then turned over to the Board of 

 Health, whose inspector took samples of the milk, and he, 



