54 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



ficult to eradicate tuberculosis from the herds than it is to 

 prevent the spread of contagion by milk, or to get clean, fresh 

 and cold milk for the children in our cities. There is as much 

 opposition on the part of the farmer, however much may be 

 said to the contrary, to an inspection and a correction of 

 those difficulties that lie along the lines of the preservation of 

 the milk from contamination with stable manure or other 

 forms of dirt, as there is in other lines. 



I remember well going to a milk farm once where they had 

 spent several thousand dollars in building barns that con- 

 formed to sanitary requirements. There were floors that were 

 impervious ; there were walls that were whitewashed ; the yard 

 was clean and the cows were clean, and there was a good milk 

 house. But the elemental and fundamental things had not 

 been attended to, for those milkers were milking with hands 

 that were dirty. At least, the backs of their hands were 

 dirty. The palms of their hands were beautifully clean, be- 

 cause the dirt, in the main, had gone into the milk. Then, as 

 they moved from cow to cow and lifted up their three-legged 

 milk stools, they grabbed them by the legs, where there was 

 dry manure and milk. I scraped off four ounces of dirt from 

 those legs. Now, there was a man who had been persuaded 

 to spend several thousand dollars for a good and sanitary 

 barn, but who told me that in his eighteen years' experience 

 as a milker, he had never washed his hands preliminary to 

 milking. 



We are now conducting dirt tests on the milk supply of the 

 City of Chicago, and it is rare that we do not find a demon- 

 strable amount of dirt in a pint bottle of milk, and in my 

 experience, it is going to be just as difficult to get a proper 

 standard of cleanliness in milk I mean, now, infant milk 

 as it is to get it free from tubercle bacilli. 



When we come to the question of getting the milk fresh, 

 there is an additional difficulty of great moment. 



The next thing is the protection of the milk supply against 

 milk-borne contagion. How is the milk to be protected 

 against contagion which can be spread by milk? I know that 

 in the State of Illinois and I rather believe in the State of 

 New York the reporting of contagion and the supervision 

 of contagion in the country places, and probably also in the 



