81 



cent milk, thickened with starch and chrome yellow." If you can get better 

 milk than you did out of the small dealers, handling three or four small 

 dairies, I do not know where it is going to come from. We have some good 

 •particular farmers who have good cattle and are taking good care of them, 

 and then we have great big dairies that do not get much care. One of the 

 best milk producers, a man in Burlington, where Mr. Supplee gets milk 

 from, is going out of business because he cannot get help. He bought 

 milk machinery, yet he can't get help. The greatest problem in the world 

 is to secure help. Men are going out of the milk business because they can't 

 get enough to produce the article that the Board of Health wants sent to 

 the city. They require too much of the producer. They will send a man 

 out on your farms who will talk about tuberculosis. A cow that is affected 

 with tuberculosis does not give enough to pay for her feed, and away she 

 goes. We don't want her. We are just as particular to keep away from 

 tuberculosis as anybody. We don't want to see it. If you let the wind 

 blow on a cow for six hours, she will not give the proper yield — they require 

 so much. You might think we would have to spray the cows with 

 rose water and cologne. They speak about better cattle. I have some of 

 the finest Jersey cattle that stand on the ground. BurlingtoD County had 

 the reputation of sending the best iced car milk to Philadelphia some five 

 years ago, and George Abbott secured the majority of that milk. He and 

 Supplee are the best men in Philadelphia and pay the best price for the 

 milk that they get. Some men get it and just keep inside the law. They 

 talk a great deal about milk. We had a man who was paid about fifty 

 dollars to come down and talk the money side of the milk pail. There is 

 no money side for the producer and that is the reason he is going out of 

 business. 



Mrs. Smith: We have got about two minutes for one or two dis- 

 cussions. 



Mr. Steffans: I have made a little study of the milk question. As 

 was so very correctly put by the speaker, the production of pure milk 

 at such a price as the city can afford to pay is the problem, and it will be 

 solved only when the city producer and the country producer co-operate. 

 To illustrate the point, we in Baltimore have an immense tobacco ware- 

 house, in which the tobacco from the entire state is sent, graded and sold. 

 We make our milk producers ship in milk, put it on an ordinary uncovered 

 platform, and very often these cans stand out in the sun. The city inspector 

 is running from can to can with his thermometer, and if it is above 60 

 degrees, he dumps it out in the gutter and the man has no redress. When 

 we come to realize that we owe to the milk producer to take as much pains 

 with the milk that he sends us as we take with that tobacco, then we shall 

 have taken the first step at least towards helping him in getting pure milk. 

 The ordinary municipal health department, with all its milk legislation, 

 says to that man, "Thou shalt not do that; we will fine you. Do that, and 



