42 THE MODERN MILK PROBLEM 



ter of the larger centers of population, yet so far is the 

 urban social structure characteristic even of the smaller 

 centers that they may have a similar problem. It not 

 infrequently happens, for example, that a suburb or a 

 town situated near a large city has milk supplies which 

 come from that center and are originally drawn from 

 some distant region; or such supplies may be dropped 

 off from a main artery of railroad traffic. It is not, 

 therefore, entirely a question of the size of the com- 

 munity, but of local conditions. Even towns where 

 the supply is derived from near by have their difficul- 

 ties in obtaining satisfactory milk supplies. 



THE PARTIES IN THE CASE 



The human factor looms large in the milk question. 

 Aside from the sanitary and economic factors involved, 

 efforts at a just and harmonious solution have to con- 

 tend with the different, and too often conflicting, in- 

 terests of several distinct classes of men. Controversy 

 has been aggravated and prolonged by ignorance of 

 underlying facts, by distrust among the parties in the 

 case, and by natural refusal to concede points not 

 clearly proved. We shall sketch here the general 

 grounds of these different standpoints. 



from within fifty miles of the city, its daily supply of 2,500,000 quarts 

 being derived from 44,000 farms located in six different States (1912). 

 Boston gets most of its supply from outside of a fifty-mile radius, 

 drawing from six States and Canada. Chicago presents a somewhat 

 different picture, most of its supply coming from comparatively near by, 

 but in this case there are many separate sources of supply and com- 

 plexity of milk routes. Such conditions, though cited from the largest 

 cities, are illustrative of general tendencies under urban and even under 

 suburban conditions. 



