NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 31 



ing? Can you tell a farmer or make him understand how to tell 

 a foreigner who does not himself understand a word of English 

 and who has not been blessed with a very good schooling in the 

 old country, how to keep a cow clean and get clean milk ? I would 

 like to see you do it. I would like to have you try it just once. 

 That is a constant condition confronting the dairyman. Such a 

 foreigner will remain with him for a week, or a month or so at 

 best, and as soon as he can speak a word or two of English, he is 

 turned into the factories or the shops in the cities. The dairyman 

 simply keeps breaking them in. That is one of the conditions that 

 he has to confront. It is an economic situation, gentlemen, and it 

 is a part of the problem. You cannot dodge it. 



This stringency of the labor question compels such severe physi- 

 cal application on the part of the farmer as to discourage the men- 

 tal application needed to change from dairy practices of the past 

 to modern sanitary conditions, and finds expression in the apathy, 

 antipathy and distrust manifested by the majority of dairymen 

 towards even any suggestion of improved methods. 



Another matter worthy of consideration is the demand of regu- 

 larity of the milk supply. This involves the co-ordination of two 

 unknown quantities, viz., the breeding or freshening of cows and 

 crop production. Cows breed with much uncertainty and irregu- 

 larity. Neither can the yield of any crop be determined ere com- 

 pletion of harvest, when it frequently is too late to wholly avert 

 the effect of any serious shortage. Shortage due to either of these 

 factors can only be met by increased expense. 



The price of beef now exerts considerable influence upon the 

 price of milk. While this was a negligible quantity ten or more 

 years ago, it has, during the past three years, assumed considerable 

 importance. This rests upon the increase in value of milch cows 

 and the agitation for the elimination of bovine tuberculosis in dairy 

 herds. Up to a few years ago the carcass salvage amounted from 

 fifty to sixty-five per cent, of the original cost of cows. At pres- 

 ent, under normal conditions, it amounts to but thirty to thirty- 

 five per cent., and in such dairies as pay heed to the eradication 

 of bovine tuberculosis by rejection of animals responding to tuber- 

 culin tests, the average period of usefulness of cows is materially 

 diminished and causes greater expense through increased replace- 

 ment of animals and greater frequency of repetition of loss in- 

 volved by carcass salvage. 



The effect of advance in prices of concentrated food stuffs, labor 

 and cows are so well understood as to require no detailed discus- 

 sion. 



The foregoing remarks have touched the more important phases 



