NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 165 



STATE REGULATION OF MILK PRICES 



MR. CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE NEW YORK MILK COM- 

 MITTEE AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I want to thank the New 

 York Milk Committee for this opportunity of addressing you 

 this evening, and I esteem it an honor to be called upon to 

 address an assemblage of earnest, zealous men and women, such 

 as you appear to be, for I do not think that any other kind 

 would come, on a Saturday evening, to a hall down in the 

 lower part of the city here, unless it were earnest and zealous 

 and impressed with the necessity of solving the problems that 

 have been before you during this milk conference. At the very 

 outset of this discussion, I want to assure you that I am not a 

 partisan in any sense of the word, or prejudiced or biased 

 against the methods of any milk dealer, whether it is a cor- 

 poration or an individual. 



When the Attorney General of the State of New York re- 

 quested me to accept a position as special deputy for the pur- 

 pose of going into the investigation of the milk traffic in New 

 York City, I went into that investigation with an entirely free 

 and open mind, and, during the whole course of that investi- 

 gation, the only brief that I held was the brief of the people 

 of the State of New York, and that means all the people of the 

 State of New York, and it is the welfare of the people of the 

 State of New York that I represent before you this evening. 



Now that investigation developed one fact which stood out 

 plainly and clearly, and that was that there existed a com- 

 bination of milk dealers in New York City and vicinity, that 

 fixed the prices that they would pay to the producers for milk, 

 and also fixed the prices that they would charge the consumers 

 for milk. With the aid of this combination, they were able to 

 underpay the producers and to overcharge the consumers. 



Now, on account of the limited time that I am given in 

 which to discuss my subject, it will be impossible for me to 

 call attention to any great portion of the evidence that went 

 into that investigation, but I will say that producer after pro- 

 ducer went on the stand in that investigation and stated that 

 he was selling his milk at the cost of production, or a little less 

 than the cost of production. Now, these men were not the or- 

 dinary farmers. They were not guessing. They brought their 



