MILK SUPPLY AND CREAMERY PRODUCTS 39 



Deliveries must be made within a certain time after 

 production or pasteurization, barns and milk stations 

 are inspected, and altogether such safeguards are em- 

 ployed as to make the supply exceedingly safe and 

 reliable. 



City Delivery. — In villages and small cities the milk 

 supply is still to a large extent in the hands of farmers 

 who ccme to town early in the morning peddling their 

 milk, often at considerable waste of time for horse and 

 man. Or a number of peddlers go over the same route 

 so that it takes a dozen wagons to cover a town where 

 three or four could do it. 



As long as there was no efficient regulation as to price 

 and quality such waste was perhaps unavoidable, as 

 competition on the part of the producers and distribu- 

 tors was the only means of protection for the con- 

 sumers. But lately state and municipal control is 

 being exercised to such an extent as to largely eliminate 

 the danger of poor milk and exorbitant prices. Further 

 development of organized delivery systems so much to 

 be desired for sanitary as well as for economical reasons, 

 may be looked for as soon as normal conditions return 

 after the close of the war. The delivery of milk is one 

 of the things that in the interest of public health must 

 be under the strictest official control, and co-operation 

 between farmers and consumers is the logical system 

 for elimination of unnecessary expenses of distribution 

 and for prompt and satisfactory service. Their in- 

 terests are or should be identical and both classes are 

 hurt by inefficient and wasteful delivery. 



In the large cities there has growTi up an industry 

 which largely monopolizes the milk supply and which 

 until lately was powerful enough to dictate prices and 



