CHAPTER III 



THE MARKETS FOR WHOLE MILK 



Section I. The City as a Market 



As shown in the first part of Chapter II, only about 14 

 per cent of the total amount of milk produced each year 

 enters directly into the milk problem, since it is about that 

 proportion which is consumed in its fluid form in our large 

 urban centers. Most of the remainder is worked up into 

 some other form or is utilized directly without becoming 

 an article of commerce. It is with the market for this 14 

 per cent and with the possibility of shifting the remain- 

 ing 86 per cent from one outlet to another as occasion de- 

 mands that we are concerned in the present chapter. 



The residents of our cities with almost no exceptions 

 use milk in one way or another as an article in the daily 

 diet. Nearly every one of these is dependent for his sup- 

 ply upon the producers within a limited radius about the 

 city. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and its suburbs in 1919 

 required upwards of five thousand eight-gallon cans of 

 fresh milk daily. At present Milwaukee gets the bulk 

 of its milk from within a radius of about thirty miles, 

 although it occasionally reaches out to upwards of eighty 

 miles. Chicago, according to the Health Department's 

 estimate, required in 1916 approximately 265,000 gallons 

 daily. Chicago is now obtaining some milk from Fond du 

 Lac, Wisconsin, nearly one hundred fifty miles distant, 

 but its regular milk zone has a radius of from seventy-five 

 to one hundred miles. 



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