Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 481 



million more. As the matter now stands, the producer and the con- 

 sumer have no voice. The middlemen fix the price, and both pro- 

 ducer and consumer suffer. I would like the Club to consider whether 

 it is riot possible to adopt some system of co-operation, and thereby 

 serve the general interest. Hitherto efforts in this direction have 

 failed, chiefly, I apprehend, for want of light. 



The Chairman — As "reform" seems to be the watchword of the 

 period, I see no good reason why the milk producers should not take 

 their turn. But there is something to be said on the other side of 

 the subject. The middlemen seem to be, at the worst, rather neces- 

 sary evils. They have opportunities and facilities consumers do not 

 have. I admit they make money, but many of them have large 

 amounts invested in their business in teams and wagons. I know one 

 who has over $100,000 thus invested. The saving the gentleman 

 proposes is so slight that it will hardly be noticed. The money these 

 milkmen make comes out of a large number, and spreads over a great 

 surface ; no one feels it very greatly. For my own part, I fail to per- 

 ceive just how the proposed improvements are to be brought about. 



Dr. Isaac P. Trimble — Has Mr. Hart any plan ? 



Mr. Hart — If agitation brings rewards " in ways that are dark and 

 tricks that are vain," one would say it ought to do something in a cause 

 so conspicuously good as the one under consideration. 



Hon. George Geddes — In Syracuse there were formerly no less 

 than half-a-dozen milk-carts running through all the streets, and mak- 

 ing the early morning hideous. After a while it occurred to some- 

 body that the machinery might be considerably simplified, and so it 

 has come about that the town has been divided up into districts, and 

 there is no such waste of time and crossing of paths. But a plan that 

 might work like a charm in what, by contrast with New York, is only 

 a four-corners, might be of no consequence here. I have in mind a 

 farmer who thought he could do something toward reforming the evils 

 of the milk business. So he hired a shop in Buffalo, and advertised 

 to furnish pure milk from his own farm at considerably less than the 

 milkmen were charging at people's doors. But this best-laid plan 

 failed to work well, and the enterprise was abandoned. PeojDle could 

 not afford to send a servant half a mile for the sake of saving two 

 cents on a quart of milk. "We may talk about the middlemen as 

 much as we like ; but I apprehend they will continue to live and 

 prosper. The whole business of this great city is merely a compli- 

 cated system of exchanges. The same is true the world over. 



Mr. John Crane — In Newark and Elizabeth several families are 

 rixsT.] 31 



