64 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF DAIRYING. 



Before determining to sell milk, the question should be considered 

 whether this method of utilizing it is really the most remunerative. 

 A very simple calculation in each case will enable this question to 

 be easily answered. A few remarks will be made on this subject 

 in Chapter VII. 



The most profitable way of disposing of milk is to the private 

 consumer, since the price of milk in all the larger towns is almost 

 always at a figure which can very rarely be obtained, and that only 

 under the most favourable circumstances, when milk is churned or 

 otherwise disposed of. The practice least to be recommended, as a 

 rule, is that of selling the milk to small milkmen, because this 

 method is often very inconvenient and troublesome. In order to 

 avoid this difficulty, farmers in recent times have founded many 

 associations for the purpose of calling into existence town dairies, 

 which may effect the sale of milk, and in which whatever milk 

 remains over unsold is daily worked up or churned. Such arrange- 

 ments have worked very well. Through the development which 

 has followed the extension of railways, agriculturists who live less 

 than twenty miles distant from a town, and not too far from a 

 railway-station, may become members of a town company, or 

 partners in a town dairy business. In all cases in which the sale 

 of milk is either exclusively or chiefly made for direct consumpt, 

 the seller may be regarded as silently assuming the moral obligation 

 to make every effort to supply all his milk unadulterated and as 

 rich as possible. 



The proper arrangements for the supplying of towns with milk, 

 carried out in the shops of milk merchants in large milk businesses in 

 towns, and in shops for the sale of specially prepared milk for 

 children and invalids, can scarcely be regarded as coming within the 

 scope of purely agricultural industries, and therefore need not be 

 described here. The author contents himself with a few remarks 

 regarding them. 



If milk in the milk-market, which comes from small milk merchants in 

 the towns, or from milk producers direct to the consumers, suffers in the 

 matter of cleanliness or percentage of fat and total solids, the blame is 

 undoubtedly with the small dealers or with the milk producer. No doubt 

 they should not alone bear the blame of the matter, for the blame must 

 also be shared by the great public, which patiently allows itself to be 

 imposed on. 



It is in the interests of the public good to limit as much as possible 



