50 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



plies him keeps more cows and more men and more cans, 

 and needs more time to distribute his milk, each source of 

 possible damage to the milk is multiplied, and the departure 

 from normal milk is necessarily constantly greater. 



City {Railroad) Milk. — Finally, as the city grows bigger 

 and bigger the milk farms are pushed further and further 

 away, until a state of things is reached in which the farmer 

 can no longer deliver his milk to the consumer, even with 

 the aid of fleetest horses. The railroad is called in, the con- 

 tractor, or some similar middleman, appears, and the farmer 

 now becomes merely the producer. But the consumer cannot 

 send to the railroad for his milk, and so another carrier, with 

 special wagons adapted to the purpose, passes to and fro 

 between the railroad and the consumer. This person is 

 known to the consumer as his " milkman ; " but as a rule he 

 is a very different kind of person from the farmer, the original 

 type of milkman. In this final form of milk supply the pro- 

 ducer may have no idea whatever of the final destination of 

 his milk, and the consumer as a rule neither knows nor cares 

 whether the milk which he buys comes even from his own 

 State. The personal relation between consumer and pro- 

 ducer is totally lost, and the middleman comes to hold the 

 position of principal importance, as the only person in touch 

 with all. These circumstances and the very size of the sys- 

 tem tend to make it largely mechanical, and all connected 

 with it merely subordinate parts in a great machine which 

 for good or ill works on incessantly. 



With the rapid growth of our cities and the development 

 of railroad facilities it is likely that something like the system 

 last described, and which now holds good only for the largest 

 cities, will come to exist to a greater or less extent even in 

 smaller cities, and it is well that we should watch these 

 tendencies, which alike concern farmers, middlemen and 

 consumers. 



Sources or the Pollution, Staleness and Infection 

 (if any) of City (Railroad) Milk, and their Removal. 



There are three principal faults attributed to city milk, 

 namely : — 



1, Filth, — very often observed. 



