COPENHAGEN DAIRY COMPANY 493 



arrive, they are taken on trucks into the cleansing-room ; that 

 reserved for the cans and large vessels being situated in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the railway station. It is a spacious 

 hall, and at certain times of the day is the scene of the greatest 

 activity. In the morning, there is the cleansing of the cans used 

 for the transport of the milk from the farm to the works, in the 

 evening comes the turn of the cans which have been used for the 

 delivery in the town. The work is distributed in this manner ; 

 certain employes take the dirty cans and place them obliquely, 

 with openings downwards, on the spokes of a large wooden wheel 

 mounted on a tank filled with carbonated soda water in which it 

 turns, successively submerging all the cans for several instants. 

 After this first operation the cans are passed to another relay of 

 employes who wash them with hot water. A third relay sterilises 

 them with jets of steam under pressure, and a fourth rinses them 

 with filtered water. After these several processes the cans are 

 transported to a drying-room, where they remain upside down until 

 their return to the farm or the town. 



The milk and cream bottles are cleaned in another room in 

 much the same manner. On leaving the carbonated soda w^ater, 

 they are washed with a bottle-brush turned by machinery, through 

 the hollow stem of which, pierced by numerous holes, boiling or 

 cold water can be spouted at will. They are then washed in 

 filtered water and placed in a special drying-room. 



The dairy. — The whole milk and the cream which come back 

 unsold to the works, are taken to that part of the premises called 

 the dairy, where they are at once made into butter, which is sold at 

 a slightly lower price than first quality butter. The residue of this 

 manufacture and the unsold half-creamed milk, after being pasteur- 

 ised, are resold at very low prices to the farms for feeding young 

 pigs. The staff is composed of office employes, drivers, sellers, 

 carriers, workers for the heavier work such as moving the cans,^ 

 filtering the milk, loading the vans, cleaning the premises and 

 utensils, etc., and of women for the lighter work such as tasting the 

 milk, bottling it, cleaning the glass utensils, making butter, etc., 

 and numbers about i8o or 200 persons. Each group of men and 

 women has to perform certain kinds of work at fixed hours, to the 

 exclusion of all other. Thanks to the excellent distribution of the 

 work, the various operations described above are accomplished 

 with remarkable regularity and rapidity. 



The Company provides the employes engaged in the interior 

 of the works gratuitously with the white duck working clothes of 



