FILTH AS infants' FOOD 103 



about as unfit a place for cows to be kept in as hu- 

 man perversity could have devised. It was low, ill- 

 ventilated, and poorly lighted; the food storage was 

 at one end, quite exposed to all the odors of the 

 place; there was no drainage except a very shallow 

 wooden gutter, and the floor being of wood such 

 a thing as flushing was next to impossible. That 

 the floor must be absorbent and soon saturated 

 with filth that could not be cleansed was altogether 

 too plainly evident. I watched the milking of the 

 cows by a very dirty laborer who had only a few 

 minutes before been wheeling a barrow, and observed 

 that neither did he wash his own hands nor the cows' 

 udders. Yet my friend had moved into the country, 

 built a stable, and bought cows at considerable ex- 

 pense, just to be certain that his baby would be 

 getting pure milk and spared the perils which city 

 babies are exposed to, and was all the time getting 

 milk that was infected as well as dirty. 



Later, when we discussed the matter, and the 

 owner of the cows realized for the first time how 

 many shortcomings there were in his stable, and how 

 many more in the hired man who had charge of the 

 cows, he undertook to have the changes made in the 

 stable which were necessary to make it as hygienic 

 as those belonging to some of the best model dairies. 

 But on the labor side he hardly dared hope for im- 

 provement. "I can get the stable made over," 



