32 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
another angle. The city can acquire little exact information 
regarding the quality of its milk supply and can do even less 
in the matter of correcting abuses until it provides a system 
of inspection and collection of milk samples. As late as 1890 
only about a dozen American cities had made specific pro- 
visions for such inspection and examination.”* 
In their attempts at handling the milk situation the cities 
have given their attention successively to various aspects of 
the milk question and for the time being each of these aspects 
has heen considered as essentially the milk problem. While 
the chronological order in which these subdivisions of the 
question have been emphasized in different cities has varied, 
the common sequence has been food value, healthfulness, 
cleanliness, and keeping quality. 
The necessity of determining existing facts with regard to 
these problems has quite naturally created the problem of 
milk inspection and the complicated results of more recent 
milk inspection have emphasized the need of milk grading as 
a way of clearly summarizing the situation for the consuming 
public. 
THE PROBLEM oF Foop VALUE 
Since milk is uniformly retailed by volume, there is a 
temptation to inerease the volume through the addition of 
water. Moreover, the ready market for cream offers an addi- 
tional temptation to partially skim the milk before sale. Many 
of the early examinations of milk supplies showed that both 
practices were fairly common. The earliest recognized 
problem of city milk supplies was safeguarding the composi- 
tion or food value of the milk. 
Massachusetts passed an aet forbidding the watering and 
skinmming of milk in 1856 as did New York City in 1873.” 
However, little could be accomplished in the absence of simple 
and accurate means for detecting these practices. The 
lactometer was of scme service in this connection but it was 
4H, N. Parker, City Milk Supply, p. 371. 
% Tbid., p. 370. 
