BOSTON AND PHILADELPHIA MILK. 107 



pure, rich milk is, and, like the people of Worcester, are 

 willing to pay for it according to its real value, and until the 

 farmers iu the country can learn to adapt their supply to the 

 requirements of the market, the middle-men will, as at pres- 

 ent, be obliged to fill the gap which distance has placed 

 between the farmer and the table of the consumer. A better 

 public sentiment and a better understanding of the whole 

 business is needed at both ends of the milk-route, in order to 

 secure at all times a full supply of pure milk to the consumer 

 and fair returns to the producer. Just how a reform in this 

 direction is to be brought about is beyond my present- power 

 of vision. Of one thing I feel sure, that the scalded skimmed 

 milk from my own dairy in the winter season, and the skimmed 

 milk from Mr. Ellsworth's dairy all the year round, for 

 butter-making, for cheese-making, or for human food, is equal 

 in value to a large proportion of much of the Boston milk by 

 the time it reaches the table of the poorer classes. 



If this is a correct statement, then the people of Boston are 

 paying eight cents per quart for what would be worth less than 

 one cent for feeding swine. Understand me. I do not 

 object to the practice of selling cream from the top of milk- 

 cans. If a customer prefers cream to milk, I would have 

 him supplied with cream ; for selling cream is as honest a 

 business as selling butter or as selling milk. Nor do I ask the 

 people of Boston to buy my skimmed milk or Mr. Ellsworth's, 

 instead of whole milk, if they can get it ; but I do object to 

 selling skimmed milk, watered milk, and doctored milk at 

 whole-milk prices, and I object to that style of doing busi- 

 ness which recognizes no difference in the price of goods of a 

 widely different quality. 



When in Philadelphia the past summer, I visited several 

 of the milk-supply depots of that city, and it does certainly 

 appear that the people of Philadelphia are much better served 

 than the people of Boston, and that the milk farmers who 

 supply that city are not brought into such close competition 

 with the pump and the aqueduct as are the farmers of our 

 State. The Philadelphia milk contractor receives his milk in 

 summer twice a day. It is brought in over the several rail- 

 roads as special freight. It is received from the farmers at 

 certain hours, transported by the quickest trains, and delivered 



