THE CASE TO-DAY 33 



Dairies, recognizing the state of the public mind, 

 have taken to advertising, with the catch-phrase "pure 

 milk." Letters are written in the newspapers demand- 

 ing it. Legislators introduce "pure milk bills" designed 

 to conciliate the consumer without arousing the farmer. 

 Civic organizations make it a major issue, the subject 

 of campaigns. Investigations are constantly under 

 way and "solutions of the problem" are galore. Polit- 

 ical platforms contain "pure milk" planks so guardedly 

 worded as to conciliate all parties concerned. Health 

 authorities long ago promised that "the consumer 

 should be educated to the value of clean milk." And 

 now agricultural authorities, awaking to their responsi- 

 bilities, announce that "dairymen must be educated to 

 the value of clean milk." And farmers hold indigna- 

 tion meetings to protest that they never intended to 

 produce anything but pure milk and that they have a 

 natural right to be let alone by theorists. Everybody 

 is trying to educate somebody else. "Pure Milk" is a 

 phrase to conjure with. 



Can Pure Milk be Got ? 



Much of this agitation is unaccompanied by clear 

 understanding of the facts. A recent public health 



discharged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco quids 

 from foot-passengers, overflowings from mud-carts, spatterings from 

 coach-wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the 

 joke's sake, the spewings of infants, who have slabbered in the tin 

 measure, which is thrown back in that condition among the milk, for 

 the benefit of the next customer; and, finally, the vermin that drops 

 from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under 

 the respectable denomination of milkmaid." Fortunately it takes much 

 less than such a description to shock the more sensitive, better-informed 

 modern milk-consumer! 



