48 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



Here is no useful analogy with a water supply, but if we 

 need any helpful analogy, we can find it in our system of pub- 

 lic oyster supply. Oysters are produced upon hundreds if- 

 not thousands of areas which are practically submarine farms : 

 from these gathering grounds they are taken by oystermen un- 

 familiar with the first principles of cleanliness ; by them or 

 others like them they are perhaps opened and thrown to- 

 gether into small receptacles. They are not united into one 

 great reservoir but transported separately, very much as milk 

 is transported, upon railways and steamboats. Various 

 middlemen have access to them during transportation and in 

 the city they are finally distributed to houses, institutions, 

 markets and similar places where, once more subjected to 

 delay and handling, they finally pass on to the ultimate con- 

 sumer, who oftentimes devours them raw. Precisely as milk 

 upon the farms is often exposed to gross pollution, so also 

 oysters drawn from farms beneath the sea may become con- 

 taminated by sewage. 



I honestly believe that the use of the analogy of oyster 

 supply rather than water supply will tend materially to 

 sounder instruction of the people in the difficulties and dan- 

 gers connected with the milk problem in America to-day. The 

 present is no time for haste or for impatience. The farmer 

 who is producing milk is, as a rule, engaged in what is still 

 a primitive if not an uncivilized industry ; he is confronted 

 by increasing costs of labor, of fodder, of family life and of 

 taxation, and as if these were not enough, he is informed that 

 milk which he always supposed to be the safest as well as the 

 simplest and best of foods, is, unless he is extremely careful, 

 liable to endanger the public health. The railroads and other 

 common carriers of milk must have their proper rewards for 

 its careful transportation. Often the milk must be refriger- 

 ated and finally the costs of distribution must be superadded 

 to those which have alreay accumulated. 



Meantime the milk is in danger of becoming sour or stale 

 and the ultimate consumer naturally enough complains both 

 of cost and quality. Boards of Health and physicians enter 

 their objections and their pleas for improvement, and the pub- 

 lic resists any considerable rise of prices. So that with all 

 these and many other conflicting elements at work the milk 



