38 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the food value of milk, and I believe when they thoroughly 

 understand it they will be willing to pay a fair price. The 

 largest milk producer in this State, so far as I know, told me 

 within six months that he could double his business, and he 

 gets 12 cents a quart for milk of 4 per cent or better quality. 

 Milk bringing this price must be near-by milk of superior 

 quality. Our producers cannot longer expect to successfully 

 compete on even terms with ordinary long-hauled milk, which 

 comes from 100 or more miles outside of the State and is 

 produced under cheaper conditions. 



Mr. H. A. Paesons. I don't want to take issue with Mr. 

 Harwood, but I certainly agree with what Mr. Weld said. 

 I think the unrest is due to the fact that people v/on't be tied 

 down to milking cows, as he contends. We have a lot of 

 Poles, but you can't get them to milk cows ; they won't be 

 tied down. 



Mr. B. W. Potter. While sitting here I thought of one 

 or two suggestions I should like to make. I think that the 

 public is in a state of mind to give the farmers of Massachu- 

 setts about any law they want, provided it is reasonable. It 

 seems to me that the State Board, or the committee on trans- 

 portation of this Board, should call a conference of the milk 

 producers and consimiers and other interested people, and 

 see if they couldn't agree upon something that would be fair 

 and reasonable and that could be easily placed upon the 

 statute books. 



I have some suggestions to make on the point where the 

 speaker has undertaken to attribute the depreciation of the 

 milk industry to the fact that the farmers themselves are 

 dissatisfied and instruct their children to leave the farm. It 

 is a commorcial question, a question of the great law of de- 

 mand and supply and of the market, which is superior to any 

 law you can make. When you come down to the question 

 of the market you have got to adapt yourself to the market 

 and make conditions such that they are satisfactory. I often 

 hear people say that if the farmers of the present day would 

 live the way their fathers did or like the Polanders live, 

 they could make money ; but is there any reason in the world 



