DISTRIBUTION OF MILK 113 



sold as fluid milk, amounting to 8 1 .25 per cent; the balance, 

 15,000 pounds, was surplus milk, amounting to 18.75 P er 

 cent. In this way the quantity of milk purchased by all 

 retailers of the City of New York and the quantity sold 

 as fluid milk and the quantity of surplus could be esti- 

 mated at the end of each month and the percentage of 

 surplus milk stated. In the above example it is suggested 

 that the producers be paid for 81.25 per cent of all the 

 milk produced by them at the full fluid price and that 

 they be paid for 18.75 P er cent ^ tne m ^ at a P r i ce which 

 corresponds to the full market price for butter, plus the 

 full market price for by-products of butter, including skim 

 milk and buttermilk. Such a plan would require that 

 some person, or commission, in whom both producers and 

 dealers had confidence, should furnish a statement of the 

 total quantity of fluid milk bought and sold as fluid milk 

 and of the total quantity of surplus milk which could not 

 be sold as fluid milk, but must be manufactured into milk 

 products. 



"From the producers' standpoint this plan pays the 

 producer all that he could possibly secure out of the busi- 

 ness if he were marketing the milk himself. The producer 

 could not expect to sell as fluid milk any more fluid milk 

 than the market will absorb. Consequently, if the retailer 

 were eliminated and the producers were retailing their 

 own product, the surplus milk unsold as fluid milk and 

 thrown back on their hands would be the same surplus 

 which would be in the hands of the distributors under 

 the plan above mentioned. The price producers would 

 receive for this surplus would be the same price they 

 would receive from the dealer in the above mentioned 

 plan. 



"It is a fact that the distributor is in a much more ad- 



