NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 137 



reject it without raising the price. Now that is the situation that 

 really encourages him to "put up." Doesn't it encourage him to 

 "shut up/' and, as a result, is he not going out of the dairy busi- 

 ness rapidly? 



That this is not an exaggerated statement of the situation, is 

 proved by the investigation which has been carried on at Cornell 

 University. In the matter presented to us yesterday, it was 

 pointed out that among the agricultural population, the men who 

 were devoting themselves to the milk business in the State of New 

 York were the men who were making the least, and whose financial 

 returns were the lowest of all classes of agriculture in the state. 

 That being the situation, the question of standards is now before 

 us. Milk standards is the subject of our discussion for this after- 

 noon. Now, the object of any milk standard, as I take it, is to 

 produce results. What you want is a better milk, and the reason you 

 devise standards of various sorts is to facilitate the preparation 

 and sale of that better milk. That is the kernel of the whole situ- 

 ation. Now, do we not need the standards that are simplest and 

 which are most readily understood by all parties connected with 

 the use of those standards? Have we not failed to make progress 

 in many instances, because we have devised standards which were 

 so technical that the people on the producing side of the proposi- 

 tion were entirely at sea regarding the relation of those standards 

 to themselves? It is rather a far cry from a definite standard of 

 so many bacteria per cubic centimetre to the question of how the 

 farmer shall manipulate his dairy business. I realize that there 

 has been a strong movement on the part of those most interested 

 in milk hygiene, to furnish the farmer with ready-made directions 1 

 for running his business. I think as fine an illustration of that 

 as I ever saw was at Atlantic City, at the first meeting of the Cer- 

 tified Milk Commission. They were engaged there in formulating 

 the details of the milk business. They had reached the stage 

 where it was being "resoluted" that in the collection of milk bot- 

 tles from the houses throughout the city, the milk dealers should 

 provide a separate wagon to haul those bottles that had come from 

 places where contagious diseases had existed, and that a separate 

 place should be provided, to sterilize those bottles before they were 

 allowed to be taken into the regular depots, so as to avoid, thereby, 

 the danger of contaminating the regular milk bottles. I see Mr. 

 Francisco chuckling a little, and I want to say that it certainly was 

 amusing. 



At Geneva we have been doing some experimental work in the 

 milk handling business. We have been trying to find what the fac- 

 tors are that will actually elevate the quality of the milk to a higher 



