lOO Agriculture and the Community. 



If we take the distribution of milk as an example, we 

 may gain some idea of how the producer is robbed and the 

 consumer penalised. Milk production was the most 

 sweated occupation in agriculture before the war. 

 Attempts were being made immediately before the outbreak 

 of war to organise the milk farmers for the purpose of 

 limiting the cut-throat competition amongst them. We 

 had a multitude of farmers producing a rapidly perishable 

 commodity with no reserve of capital, requiring to turn 

 their product into money at once. The wholesale dealers 

 took adv^antage of this and played off one producer against 

 the other. The men who were dependent on milk 

 production found the market raided in summer by other 

 farmers who had surplus milk to dispose of, and were 

 concerned merely to get rid of it without any consideration 

 of the effect on the market. The result was that the 

 price was cut to the point where the farmers could keep 

 going only by the help of the unpaid labour of their own 

 families or by working their paid workers excessively 

 long hours. Money was made in milk production, 

 particularly by those farmers who were near industrial 

 centres and could dispose of their milk retail, but the 

 conditions of employment were the worst in agriculture 

 and that is saying a good deal. 



How the consumer fared is notorious from the series of 

 Acts and bye-laws dealing with the sale of milk and the 

 continual prosecutions for adulteration. Step by step the 

 authorities had controlled the distribution and sale of 

 milk until control of production was reached to ensure that 

 the consumer was neither swindled nor infected with 



