232 APPENDIX E 



There are many reasons for this decrease in the number of cattle, 

 but they may all be summed up in the statement that the keeping 

 of cattle has ceased to be profitable under present conditions. The 

 demand from the cities for improvement in the quality of milk has 

 not been met, simply because the average farmer who sells his 

 milk to a middleman cannot make dairying pay. . . . To-day the 

 whole subject is misunderstood both by producers and consumers. 

 Whether rightly or wrongly, consumers believe that milk should 

 be delivered to them at a price not more than nine or ten cents a 

 quart. Any attempt to raise that price will only result in a lessened 

 consumption, an end not to be desired if we consider the food values 

 of milk and the health of children. 



Believing that "the trouble arises chiefly from the middle- 

 man, who purchases at low rates from the producer milk 

 both good and bad, mixes these, averaging their butter-fat 

 contents, and then sells a low-grade milk at a large profit," 

 the Commission makes the following radical recommenda- 

 tion : 



In view of these facts your Commission therefore recommends 

 that cities or urban centers having a population of over 5,000 be 

 required to establish municipally owned central milk depots, con- 

 venient to transportation centers, and to allow no milk whatsoever 

 to be sold within their limits before it has passed through these 

 depots for standardization and pasteurization, under the supervision 

 of their Boards of Health, in accordance with rules approved by the 

 State Board of Health. 



This recommendation does not apply to the smaller towns, whose 

 milk supply is as poor, if not poorer, than the supply in cities. Some 

 arrangement, however, can easily be made, either to have the milk 

 of the towns standardized at the nearest city depot or to let certain 

 towns, in combination or separately, set up depots of their own. 



The Commission " believes that no solution of the milk 

 problem is worth while unless it insists on a thorough stand- 

 ardization, so that each consumer may know exactly what he 

 pays for in purchasing milk/' and recommends the classifica- 



