41 6 MILK AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH chap. 



come direct from the muck-fork to the milk-XDail without 

 ablution or overall is to harass the farmer, it is surely time he 

 was harassed. 



5. It will be advanced that to require milk to be clean 

 will send up the retail price of milk. Even eminent public 

 health authorities, as well as laymen, proclaim the view that 

 whatever is necessary the price of milk must not be raised, 

 otherwise more harm than good will be done. 



To the writer this does not appear a sound argument. 

 Crudely stated, it means that a manure-polluted, bacteria-laden, 

 nearly putrefying milk at 4d. a quart is a better food for the 

 poor than a clean pure milk at 4^d. to 5d. a quart. We do 

 not apply the same argument to other foods. Meat is vital 

 food as well as milk, but we do not argue that since rejection 

 of diseased meat or rotten fish may send up the market price 

 of meat or fish, that it is better to let people eat diseased meat 

 or rotten fish rather than risk a rise in price. Unfortunately 

 manured milk does not so readily betray itself. 



The logical plan is to carefully measure the danger to the 

 community of dirty and infected milk, to decide what is 

 necessary and what is reasonable on sanitary grounds to 

 require, and then to devise measures to enforce those reason- 

 able requirements, and this whether or no the price of milk is 

 likely to be a little enhanced. 



It is probable that effective measures of improvement will 

 increase the cost of milk. The farmer and the milk purveyor 

 are not philanthropists, and have a right to a fair profit, and 

 if it costs more to produce milk in a clean condition, it is 

 surely only reasonable that the price should be raised to give 

 them that fair profit. 



The writer's own opinion is that the enforcement of proper 

 procedures in regard to milk will, at first, cause the retail 

 price of milk to go up. This rise will be only temporary, 

 and will fall when it is found that the requirements are 

 not costly in themselves, but essentially matters of educa- 

 tion and the elimination of bad habits and practices. 

 After a time it will be found that the cost of production is 

 not appreciably raised, consequently, by the action of ordinary 

 economic forces, the prices will go back to the old level, but 

 the price will be that of a clean instead of a dirty milk. That 



