MILK SURVEY OF THE CITY OF ROCHESTER 



133 



TABLE No. 63 

 EXPERIMENTAL 



The cost of the operation of laboratories is difficult to standardize, 

 for the reason that the amount of work depends greatly on local condi- 

 tions, and how much experimental work the management of the milk 

 plant desires to carry out. In the plants listed in Table No. 63 it can be 

 seen that the first three plants employ four laboratory workers each, while 

 plant No. 8 employs only two such workers. Under a centralized system 

 it is clear that only one laboratory would be necessary. A fair basis for 

 the testing of the milk supply of Rochester under such a centralized sys- 

 tem would be two laboratory workers, working a total of 16 man hours 

 at a cost of .41' per hour. This would be a cost of .000081 per quart, or 



$2,080.00. 



OFFICE FORCE 



Only a small number of the milk companies in the City of Rochester 

 make any attempt to keep books. The cost accountants employed by the 

 Survey found only four companies who kept books by methods sufficiently 

 accurate to justify the use of the figures as a basis for the costs reported 

 by them. The bookkeepers employed by these companies and the small 

 amount of bookkeeping done by a number of the other companies in- 

 cluded a total volume of business of 56,687 quarts of milk. The total 

 number of persons employed in keeping such accounts for Rochester is 

 72, working for a period of 297 man hours, at the rate of 191 quarts of 

 milk per man hour, and at a cost of .002042 per quart. Included in these 

 72 persons are about 47 who work on an average of about two hours per 

 day on their milk accounts. The bookkeepers employed by all of the com- 

 panies, including Rochester, and the work performed is shown in Table 

 No. 64. 



