THE MARKETS FOR WHOLE MILK 53 



accept a lower price than he feels he can afford to take, be- 

 cause men farther out from the city have been found 

 who can be induced to produce milk at a lower price. 



Producers often assume that inasmuch as they have 

 been supplying a city for a number of years, they have ac- 

 quired a sort of vested right in the city's market. In 

 the summer of 1918 several instances came to the writer's 

 notice in which producers actually requested of the Federal 

 Milk Commission for Ohio that it recognize such rights. 

 In one instance particularly it was proposed that the lead- 

 ing dealer be prohibited from buying cheaper milk out- 

 side the regular milk zone for the purpose of distributing 

 it in the city and thus lowering the price which the farmers 

 could secure. They made the claim that he was actually 

 producing a surplus by sending trucks into sections which 

 had never before sent milk to the city. The dealer, on 

 the other hand, showed that he was merely trying to build 

 up a condensing business with the aid of auto trucks and 

 claimed that he was benefiting the farmers as a whole, 

 particularly those who had formerly had only a poor mar- 

 ket for their milk. Naturally the commission refused to 

 grant the request of the producers for a monopoly of the 

 milk trade of the city, for that is what it would have been. 



Section 2. Alternative Markets 



What are the alternative markets in which a producer 

 may sell? For many producers there is no good alterna- 

 tive market, where, for example, in some localities the 

 city demand has driven out local cheese factories and 

 creameries, leaving the city milk trade as the farmer's 

 only market, unless he chooses to make his cream into 

 butter or cheese on the farm or possibly to ship the cream 

 to a distant creamery or ice-cream factory. Again, a given 



