THE WORCESTER MILK MARKET 13 



Purchases by Dealers 



The supph' of milk must be obtained from the farmer originally. A little over 

 60 million pounds of fluid milk were purchased by the 79 dealers during the year. 

 Information on cream supplies was only ax'ailable for January and in that month 

 cream dealers purchased an average of 5,759 quarts daily. This amount of cream 

 is the milk equivalent of 123,812 pounds, and the a\erage daily purchases of milk 

 in January were 159,633 pounds. 



In January, therefore, Worcester milk dealers purchased daily 283,445 pounds 

 of milk and cream in terms of milk equivalent. For the census population this 

 daily volume indicates a very high per capita consumption of about one and 

 one-half pints, but the actual per capita consumption was probably not so high 

 because of temporary increases in population and because part of the supply 

 was delivered to consumers in neighboring towns. 



Table 4. — Worcester cream and milk supply by state of origin 

 January, 1935 



Cream Milk 



State of Percent State of Percent 



Origin Quarts of Total Origin Pounds of Total 



Michigan 72,000 40.3 Aiassachusetts . . 4,543,610 91.8 



Vermont 37,200 20.9 Vermont 215,116 4.4 



Indiana 32,000 17.9 New York 173,290 3.5 



Ohio 24,000 13.4. Connecticut 16,613 .3 



Missouri 8,000 4.5 



Connecticut 5,000 2.8 Total Milk 4,948,629 100.0 



Maine 320 .2 Total Cream. . . . 3,838,180* 



Total 178,520 100.0 Grand Total 8,786,809 



*Milk Equivalent in Pounds. 



Table 4 shows the sources of milk and cream supplies in January 1935. Nearly 

 all of the supply of cream was obtained from seven outside states, the largest 

 proportion (40.3 percent) coming from Michigan. Cream per fat unit is much 

 cheaper to transport to market than fluid milk. This enables milk production 

 for cream use in areas of naturally low production costs and accounts for a widely 

 fluctuating creamshed. The dealers' records, however, showed that the sources 

 for the rest of the year were not too dififerent from those in January, varying 

 monthly between Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Missouri. 



About 92 percent of the fluid milk, on the other hand, was produced in Massa- 

 chusetts, practically all in Worcester County, and the remaining 8 percent was 

 almost equally divided between Vermont and New York, with a negligible 

 amount coming from Connecticut. Although only 80 percent was produced in 

 Massachusetts in 1930, city milk inspectors serving Worcester for the past several 

 years report that since that year shifts in supply have been comparatively slight. 

 The three maps in Figure 5 bear this out, for they show conclusively that through 

 the years 1930, 1932, and 1935 Worcester's milkshed in Massachusetts varied 



