34 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



provided with every accommodation for receiving, keeping, 

 handling and distributing milk, for manufacture of all milk 

 products, for boarding and lodging the thirty or more employ- 

 ees and for general business purposes. There are offices, the 

 directors' room, and a well-arranged hall for meetings and dis- 

 cussions by members of the association and other dairymen. 

 In the rear are barns and stables for twenty-five horses, sheds 

 for as many wagons, sleighs, harnesses, etc., also a repair shop, 

 a blacksmith shop and other conveniences. The association 

 maintains twenty milk routes, with a wagon and pedler upon 

 each, supplying about 40,000 people through the year. Thus 

 one wagon serves 2,000 persons, or about 400 families. The 

 management is delegated to a president, vice-president, and 

 nine directors, of whom five form the executive board, and the 

 working force comprises a superintendent, cashier and account- 

 ant, milk-receiver, two distributing clerks, cheese-maker, 

 hostler, blacksmith and helper, housekeeper and assistant, and 

 twenty pedlers. All the help is boarded at the building of 

 the company, and one of the most interesting items in connec- 

 tion with the enterprise is the fact that board satisfactory to 

 the employees has been furnished at a cost of less than ten 

 dollars a month. 



The association originated from a prosaic desire on the 

 part of milk-producers to benefit themselves, and a belief 

 that several persons who were selling milk in Syracuse, each 

 one by himself, could economize in labor and cost of delivery 

 by co-operation. The object was to establish a central 

 depot, where the milk produced by all could be received, 

 thence distributed, so far as it could be used as milk, and 

 provision made for Avorking the surplus into butter and 

 cheese, on joint account. The great saving expected was in 

 the delivery to consumers ; it was thought that instead of 

 half a dozen wagons running daily through the same streets, 

 to furnish here and there a family, as occurs often under the 

 usual system, the customers of the six pedlers might, b}^ 

 union of interests, be supplied from a single wagon. Next 

 was the expected saving by advantageous use of the surplus 

 milk; that of several pedlers being "pooled" or handled 

 in one mass. Both of these expectations have been so far 

 realized as to give prosperity to the association. The inde- 



