Part II.] COST OF ]MILK PRODUCTION. 59 



This survey was made by experts going to the farms of the 

 best farmers throughout New England and obtaining as accu- 

 rate information as possible directly from their books. In some 

 cases certain estimates were necessary, but these were made 

 as conservatively as possible. The element of guesswork was, 

 therefore, practically eliminated. It will be seen by referring 

 to Table II. that the various items of cost which enter into any 

 manufacturing business have been considered, such as interest 

 on investment, depreciation, labor, business risk, managerial 

 ability and the like. These field men also obtained quantity 

 figures as far as possible, that is, figures which deal with the 

 amount of feeds of various sorts which are fed to their dairy 

 cows, the number of hours of man labor and horse labor, and 

 items of this sort. If these are definitely known it is a rela- 

 tively easy matter to supply the present costs and keep the 

 survey constantlj^' up to date. Since this survey was made it 

 has been brought up to date several times for the use of various 

 milk commissions. 



It has been objected to surveys of this kind that they are out 

 of date even before they are completed, and therefore useless. 

 In the case of the ordinary survey jt has been argued that the 

 price of such an article as milk should be based on the selling 

 price of the different factors which enter into it; for example, 

 the price of pork at the present time is based upon the price of 

 corn. Of course, this is a proper basis for price fixing, and we 

 have attempted to take cognizance of this in this survey, and 

 have made it in such a way that while it is not definitely based 

 on an automatic relation between the cost of milk production 

 and the cost of feed, labor, etc., yet the latter can be easily 

 substituted in our figures and constantly brought up to date. 



These costs have also been summarized for the different States 

 on Table I., and a weighted average has been made which takes 

 into consideration the relative amount of milk which comes into 

 Boston from the different States. Obviously, it is not fair to 

 consider the States equal when one is concerned with the price of 

 milk in Boston, because very much more milk comes from Xer- 

 mont and New Hampshire than from Massachusetts, for example, 

 and the cost of producing a quart of milk in Massachusetts is 

 much higher than in the other New England States. 



