DOES MILK TRAFFIC PAY ? 217 



very carefully into the matter is that the milk traffic 

 does not pay. This is the view taken by, amongst 

 others, Mr. Alfred Malby, Goods Manager of the 

 London and South-Western Railway, from whose 

 evidence before the Departmental Committee on agri- 

 cultural railway rates I take the following : 



As regards the milk traffic, I say without hesitation that a large 

 portion of this traffic is carried at rates which do not cover fully 

 the cost of working. . . . Some years ago statistics were got out, 

 not for the purpose of this case or any other case, but for our own 

 satisfaction. We took the expenses of working the traffic over 

 certain periods, and we also took the revenue from it, and from 

 those statistics we arrived at the conclusion that it was un- 

 remunerative. 



This conclusion (and it is fully borne out, I am told, 

 by a like investigation made by another company) 

 would seem to refute the idea that the railways are 

 getting much profit out of their one penny per gallon ; 

 and it is pretty obvious that if the milk industry is to 

 be put on a better commercial footing than at present, 

 the efforts made should be in the direction, not of 

 worrying the railways into granting further con- 

 cessions, but of effecting generally in the trade itself 

 that better organization by means of which alone the 

 members of the Staffordshire Farmers' Association 

 have secured their clear financial gain of from 30,000 

 to 40,000 per annum. 



Whether or not the present decidedly primitive 

 method of handling such large quantities of milk by 

 means of so many different churns could be improved 

 upon as the further result of combined effort by the 

 adoption, in London at least, of the system resorted to 

 by the Union of Berlin Milk Dealers, is a question 

 which those concerned must decide for themselves. 

 But it is worth considering. What the Berlin Union 

 of Milk Dealers have arranged is a daily service of 



