22 COMMERCIAL ASPECTS OF MILK-SUPPLY 



of milk to small retailers who cannot go for it to the 

 railway-stations. 



The result of these further developments will, doubt- 

 less, be awaited with interest by dairy farmers through- 

 out the country ; but in the meantime fresh difficulties 

 have arisen in another direction. The better terms 

 which combined effort has enabled the producers to get 

 for their milk are leading to a substantial increase in 

 the supplies put on the market, more especially because 

 many individuals who hitherto devoted their energies 

 to cheese-making are now disposing of the fresh milk 

 instead. For a succession of years the association has 

 maintained steady prices ; but it can do so no longer 

 in the face of over-production, and the problem of the 

 moment, as these lines are being written, is the pro- 

 fitable disposal of the surplus, so that it may no longer 

 come upon the fresh-milk market. Next, it seems, to 

 selling ' raw ' milk, the best thing to do is to turn it 

 into condensed milk ; the selling of cream comes next, 

 and the making of cheese next, while the conversion 

 into butter is regarded as the least remunerative of all. 

 What is proposed in Staffordshire is that a factory 

 should be set up at Uttoxeter, where the milk produced 

 in excess of actual fresh-milk requirements could be 

 dealt with by one or other of these different processes 

 of manufacture. 



The Cheshire milk-producers, to whose Association 

 I have already alluded, send only a comparatively small 

 quantity of their total output to London ; but they find, 

 on the other hand, important markets in Manchester 

 (which city alone is said to take 30,000 gallons of milk 

 a day), Liverpool, Warrington, Stockport, St. Helens, 

 Oldham, Birkenhead, New Brighton and other towns 

 on the south side of the Mersey, the Potteries, Walsall, 

 Birmingham, and Wolverhampton. The Cheshire Asso- 



