20 THE MARKETING OF WHOLE MILK 



from the stressing of mere conditions as indicative of qual- 

 ity to the stressing of the bacterial count, supplemented 

 by the sediment test. The shift was given impetus by 

 an experiment carried on in 1903 at Pennington, New Jer- 

 sey, where for a whole year daily bacterial tests were made 

 on milk produced in two barns not over one hundred feet 

 apart on the same farm. One barn, equipped to comply 

 with score card ideals, cost over twenty thousand dollars. 

 The other, an old-fashioned stable with no sanitary feat- 

 ures, cost not more than four hundred dollars. The year's 

 results showed that the milk produced in the old barn was 

 practically as good as that produced in the high-priced barn l 

 and that the dairyman is more important than the dairy. 



In 1910 the experiment was carried further on a large 

 scale. Seventy-one dairy farmers near Homer, New York, 

 were paid a premium for extra quality in milk as shown 

 by bacterial tests. The farmers received instructions as 

 to how to produce clean milk, and the results of the 

 tests were posted with sufficient frequency to let each 

 farmer know just where he^stood. The majority of these 

 farmers were able to produce milk containing less than 

 ten thousand bacteria per cubic centimeter even in hot 

 weather. 2 This experiment clearly proves that more de- 

 pends upon the man and his methods than upon mere 

 conditions. 



A novel test was made near the two towns of Oxford 

 and Kelton, Pennsylvania, in 1915. Ten Oxford dairy- 

 men who had learned to produce clean milk paired off 

 with ten Kelton dairy farmers for one day, in order to 

 see what could be done by good dairymen even on farms 

 with which they were not familiar. The Kelton dairy- 

 men had never attempted to produce high grade milk. 



1 North, C. E., Farmers' Clean Milk Book, p. 78. 2 Ibid., p. 81. 



