32 THE MODERN MILK PROBLEM 



"Mr. Milk Supply is worse than Mr. Barleycorn/' are 

 fair examples of the harrowing type : * 



Fifty per cent of the milk that goes to the creamery for 

 pasteurization is filthy, utterly unfit for food. 



The farmer is hopeless dirty, mostly ignorant, careless. 

 Because he can't get enough for his milk he won't give good 

 milk. 



We have found to our dismay that dealers on whom we 

 have been depending have been permitting large numbers 

 of diseased cattle in their herds. 



We can't get the right kind of legislation. 



The politicians are playing a political game with the 

 farmers. We've got to depend on our own efforts. 



There are only two grades of milk good milk and bad 

 milk. The rest are simply grades of dirt. 



Such utterances have awakened public attention, 

 but they have had at the same time an undesirable 

 effect on the minds of some persons. Just as publicity 

 regarding tuberculosis has had as a by-product an 

 undue dread of consumptives, so has the "pure milk" 

 campaign made some people fearful of milk as such. 

 This has been perhaps an unavoidable incident of 

 forceful publicity, but it is an unfortunate one now 

 calling for correction. 



* The language and literature of exposure are not a new development. 

 A notable example dates back to Smollett's description, in the novel 

 "Humphrey Clinker," of the milk supply of eighteenth-century Lon- 

 don: "I need not dwell on the pallid contaminated mush which they 

 call strawberries, soiled and tossed by greasy paws through twenty 

 baskets crusted with dirt, and then presented with the worst milk, 

 thickened with the worst flour, into a bad likeness of cream; but the 

 milk itself should not pass unanalyzed, the produce of faded cabbage 

 leaves and sour draff, lowered with hot water, frothed with bruised 

 snails, carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings 



