50 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



has tremendously increased; no person is quite as careful of 

 some other fellow's can as he is of his own. If the farmers 

 owned or had to pay for each can they used less cans would 

 be required, and fewer would be used for sap and molasses. 

 On the basis of sale delivered at market it was necessary to 

 provide a system of containers for the shipment of milk. It 

 was therefore arranged that an allowance of .0005 be made 

 for the use of cans. It was impossible to distribute this cost 

 equitably between the producers, the outer zone producers 

 requiring much larger can service. 



^. Railroad Transportation. — The transportation charges vary 

 on the different lines of railroad entering Boston, but inasmuch 

 as the vast majority of milk consumed is shipped on the 

 Boston & Maine, or lines having joint rate arrangements with 

 the Boston & Maine, the Boston & Maine Railroad rates were 

 used as a basis on which transportation deductions should be 

 figured, with the understanding that if any other railroad was 

 actually used, rates on it should be allowed. The railroad 

 rates not only vary in amount for 20 miles, but they vary 

 according to the size of the container in interstate transporta- 

 tion. The arrangement with the dealers is that they shall pay 

 the freight and deduct the actual amount from the producer's 

 check. The association announces a price of so much a quart 

 f.o.b. market, and then figures out the deductions, notifying 

 the farmers in each zone what price per can or per hundred 

 weight is awarded to him at his railroad station. 



Early in the year market divisions of the main association 

 were formed in five cities other than Boston, and committees 

 of producers sending milk to those markets, with a member of 

 the main association sitting in, established prices after more or 

 less harmonious conferences with the dealers. 



In nearly all places it was a new and not altogether welcome 

 thing for the farmers to call in the dealers, and through a 

 committee negotiate a trade for milk. But be it said to the 

 credit of the dealers that nearly everywhere they have recog- 

 nized that the old day of individual bargaining, the haphazard 

 catch-as-catch-can trading, has passed. Gradually but surely 

 they have come to see that their business as well as ours is 

 being helped by the establishment of a system under which 



