4 o8 MILK AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH CHAP. 



tions would have to be undertaken. The expenses would 

 be heavy, and it is hardly to be expected that a County 

 Council, composed of members largely, directly or indirectly, 

 interested in the production of milk, and put into office by an 

 electorate largely influenced by the agricultural interest, would 

 view the work and the expense in the enthusiastic manner 

 necessary for success. This lack of enthusiasm would be 

 accentuated by the fact that the benefits were mainly for 

 urban districts quite unconnected with the county which 

 provided the money. Indeed, it may reasonably be contended 

 that it is not fair to throw this financial burden upon County 

 Councils. 



(6) Artificial Purification of Milk. Another view is 

 that the provision of clean pure milk is so difficult and im- 

 practicable that the best plan is not to strive for it but 

 to take what we now have and by sterilisation and pasteurisa- 

 tion render it bacterially harmless. While a considerable 

 body of argument may be advanced in favour of such a plan 

 as a temporary measure pending the obtaining of pure milk, 

 most authorities are agreed that this solution is no satisfactory 

 solution, and that sterilised milk is not equal to pure new 

 milk. The reasons for .this view have been fully considered. 



(c) Municipalisation. Leslie Mackenzie appears to have 

 been the first (1898) to suggest that some measure of muni- 

 cipalisation may be the solution of the problem, and this view 

 has been advanced by a number of writers. Another writer, 

 for example, says : " The more I study this question the more 

 firmly am I convinced that only by an extension of the 

 principle of direct municipal ownership and supply can we 

 bring about a really adequate reform of the milk supply." 



In the writer's opinion there are practically insuperable 

 difficulties in the way of such a proposal, and even if it were 

 practicable it is not desirable. It is not within the range of 

 practical politics. Municipal ownership might possibly be 

 useful in the case of a few individual herds, kept as an object 

 lesson of cleanliness, and also to supply a specially pure milk 

 on the lines of the milk supplied by the American Milk 

 Commissions. 



(d) Provision of Clean Milk ~by a gentle Process of Education 

 of the Milk Producer and Milk Vendor. This is a view ex- 



