136 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



shall procure the closing of that seam. If there is any one 

 here who can think of any objection to what I am urging, I 

 hope they will let it be known, for personally, I cannot think 

 of any. The can is stronger and it can be kept clean more 

 easily, and it will last quite as long. I see everything that will 

 warrant our insisting upon cans being made in that way, and 

 I can see no objection to them. 



THE CHAIRMAN : I know that all the practical persons here will 

 realize that these are not little things. It is a hard thing to get 

 these apparently small matters attended to. I know that in the Milk 

 Commission of New York we had a woman appointed chief in- 

 spector, because she will see the smaller things which are so imr 

 portant, whereas just a man would pass them over as being hardly 

 worthy of his attention. Those of us who have examined bacterio- 

 logically a little old milk know how a drop of it may have a hun- 

 dred million bacteria. When such a drop of milk gets into a can 

 of good, fresh milk, you can see what the result will be. 



We have come now to the time of discussion, and the Chairman 

 has asked me to ask you to limit the discussion of the whole matter 

 to only one individual, leaving later discussions to come under the 

 various resolutions which the Chairman will give me, and so I am 

 going to ask, with your permission, that Prof. Harding, of the 

 Geneva Experiment Station, who has done so much and written so 

 much on this line of work, close the discussion for us. 



PROF. HARDING spoke as follows: 



Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen: I realize that the 

 hour is late and that you have had a long session, and that you 

 have here important questions before you, but I think, at this time, 

 some things ought to be said on the side of the individual who is 

 so frequently told "Put up or shut up," the milk producer. 



Now, the situation in which the milk producer finds himself is 

 this: To produce a thoroughly satisfactory grade of milk, such 

 as you gentlemen desire to have furnished in New York City, re- 

 quires four cents on the farm, to give the farmer a reasonable re- 

 turn for his investment in time and labor. He is actually getting 

 a little more than three cents in the State of New York to-day. 

 That milk which he is producing is almost exclusively purchased 

 on the basis of what it weighs or what it may weigh. Every pound 

 of fertilizer which he puts into that milk is worth to him, on the 

 market, nearly two cents, and he asks, when he is producing this 

 milk, what it can be economically produced for, and then you ask 

 him to take out that for which you are not willing to pay him, and 



