34 



As the world advances in knowledge first comes one thing and then 

 another, until, at times, he feels discouraged. He cannot aflford mistakes, 

 he cannot aftord unnecessary outlays. But the public must be protected, 

 and it is the farmer's duty to study the short road to the accomplishment 

 of this by first adopting the essentials and afterwards adding the embel- 

 lishments, as his trade demands and his means will allow. But be it 

 ever remembered that the production of clean milk is in itself not a pro- 

 hibitively expensive operation. It is the purpose of this article to en- 

 coui'age and if possible help the average dairyman, believing that the 

 persistent producer of unsanitary milk must of necessity ultimately drop 

 out of the business, and that the fancy farmer, so-called, can take care 

 of himself. 



In order to appreciate the present situation in which the average milk 

 producer, ie., the man who sells his milk to contractors and peddlers, 

 finds himself, let us briefly i-eview the evolution of the milk business* 

 Fifty years ago the New England farmer did everything at home and 

 got all there was in the business up to the point of selling his product, 

 then mainly cheese or butter, to the local storekeeper or country mer- 

 chant, and those farmers near cities and towns selling milk either direct 

 to the consumer or sometimes to the peddler. In the sixties, cheese 

 factories sprang up, taking the burden of cheese making from the farm- 

 house, thus relieving the farmer, and especially the farmer's wife, of 

 much hard work. Up to this time the farmer was not only the manu- 

 facturer of his own cheese and butter but also raised all his grain, and 

 made a large amount of pork by keeping hogs fed upon the by- 

 products, whey and skim milk. This establishment of cheese factories 

 was the first step towards concentration in dairying in the districts now 

 covered by the milk contractors. The seventies saw the introduction 

 of creameries, the cheese business being driven to the west. At this 

 time the Boston milk contractors began to reach out 60 or more miles 

 for their supply. The creameries, therefore, within that radius, except 

 in a few isolated instances, were short lived, and one by one they are 

 dropping out, all over the State, New York city drawing milk from 

 western Berkshire, and Boston from the rest of the State, aside from 

 the local consumption by our growing cities and towns. 



The business of the Massachusetts dairyman has undergone a wonder- 

 ful change, — a change as complete in its way as the business of shoe 

 making, in its transformation from the isolated cobbler in his little 

 house at the cross roads to the great factories in Lynn, Brockton and 

 elsewhere. Dairying has followed the trend of every industry, viz., 

 towards concentration and specialization. On the farms where once 

 flourished the cheese making, the butter making, the swine fattening, 

 beef fattening and the slaughterhouse, where also the wheat for the 

 family and the grain for the animals were raised, and the flour bolted 

 and the grain ground at the near-by grist mill, and where the great 

 manure piles wei'e the result of feeding the by-products, all have given 

 place to the modern milk producer, who spends his energies in raising 

 grass and clover for hay and corn for silage, green ci'ops for summer 

 feed, and the milk goes to Boston or elsewhere at the very lowest price 



