52 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



agencies of time or place or circumstance, do not illumine, 

 in great measure, as to the necessities that exist in cities where 

 there is a railroad haul. 



The second group of cities is that group in which there is a 

 wagon haul, the group of cities in which the milk is produced 

 so close to the city that, when comparatively fresh, it can be 

 loaded into wagons and can be, within an hour or two, at the 

 home of the consumer. There, too, there has intervened so 

 little of time and so little of foreign circumstance or incident, 

 that there is not the necessity for the same provisions of con- 

 trol, for the same points of view, for the same masterly ac- 

 tivity, that is necessary where there exists a railroad haul. 



There is a legend in law that time is the essence of the con- 

 tract, and while this is true of certain legal transactions, there 

 is no legal transaction of which it is anywhere near so true 

 as it is of milk. In the milk question, time is the essence of 

 the contract, and for every moment of time that has inter- 

 posed between the milking of the cow and the consumption of 

 the milk by the consumer, and for every interposition in the 

 handling, the carrying, the warmth and every other detail 

 that influences that milk, there is brought into play the neces- 

 sity for additional precautions for control. I am sure that 

 those who make up so large a part of this audience, namely, 

 the administrators, have been constantly brought face to face 

 with the point of view of the farmer who says, "This milk has 

 been consumed by my children, and they have grown up well 

 and strong, and I argue from that that it cannot be harmful 

 for the children of the city." That farmer forgets that the 

 milk, as he consumes it, or as it is consumed by his child, was 

 but two or three or, at most, six or eight hours old ; that the 

 foreign bodies that were there and the bacteria that were 

 there, did not have much of opportunity for the development 

 of their baneful influences ; but that that is not the condition 

 of affairs that prevails when that milk has been hauled sev- 

 eral miles in a wagon, has been delivered to a railroad plat- 

 form, has been loaded up on trains, and hauled a few hundred 

 miles into the city, where, again, it has been loaded upon a 

 wagon and hauled a few miles to a depot, and then again upon 

 a wagon and hauled a few miles through the city streets and 

 delivered at a doorstep, where it has remained exposed to the 



