MILK AS A MARKET COMMODITY 9 



It is interesting to note that the per capita consump- 

 tion in general is largest in the northern and eastern parts 

 of the country, where dairying is well developed, and low- 

 est in the south and west, where dairying is more or less 

 backward and where prices are highest. 



The coming of prohibition is leading to a wider use of 

 milk as a beverage among working men in our industial 

 centers, and this use will undoubtedly become more gen- 

 eral as milk is made more readily available at all times. 

 Many milk distributors at present provide for the delivery 

 of milk to workmen in pint or half pint bottles at the noon 

 hour. 



Demand for milk can undoubtedly be greatly increased 

 by judicious publicity and advertising. Most of the adver- 

 tising hitherto has been done by rival distributors whose 

 arguments have sought to show that the milk of each par- 

 ticular dealer was pure and uncontaminated and that 

 mothers might give that specific milk to their children 

 without fear of conveying deadly disease. Such adver- 

 vertising undoubtedly sold the product of one dealer at 

 the expense of the others, but at the same time it raised 

 doubt in the minds of consumers as to the sanitary quality 

 of all milk. This sort of advertising is not unlike that of 

 a whisky dealer who proclaimed his brand of goods as 

 "the whisky without a headache," little realizing that in 

 calling attention to the fact that most whisky does pro- 

 duce a headache, he was putting not only others but him- 

 jself out of business.' 



Constructive advertising is needed— the kind, for ex- 

 ample, that suggests specific ways for using milk. Dairy- 

 men can well learn a lesson from some of the western fruit 

 growers. The latter have published recipes for preparing 



1 Editorial, Tobacco Leaf, Jan. 8, 1920, p. 4. 



