170 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



which may be sharply distinguished from the forms 

 of petty dishonesty above described. The dairyman 

 or dealer who adds water to his milk, or mixes skimmed 

 milk with milk of good quality, is deliberately robbing 

 his customers. He is a petty thief of a very odious 

 type. But the dairyman or dealer who puts "pre- 

 servatives" into his milk is commonly actuated by no 

 such dishonest motives. It is not because he is 

 desirous of cheating anybody that he adds chemical 

 compounds to his milk to keep it from turning sour. 

 Speaking generally, he desires to please his customers 

 by supplying a milk that will keep sweet a long time; 

 to avoid expensive purchases of ice and the more or 

 less frequent loss of profits caused by having quan- 

 tities of milk become sour and unsalable. Fre- 

 quently he buys a preparation which has been seduc- 

 tively advertised or personally recommended to him, 

 bearing some such fine name as " Iceline," " Freezine," 

 " Preservaline," and so on through a long list of com- 

 pounds, most of which contain chemicals that are 

 injurious to the digestive organs, especially of infants. 

 The average milkman does not know that "Iceline" 

 and "Freezine" contain dangerous quantities of that 

 powerful germicide, formaldehyde ; that " Preserva- 

 line" of one brand contains boracic acid, while other 

 brands contain salicylic acid, sodium sulphite, ben- 

 zoic acid, and formaldehyde, the latter varying from 

 1.99 per cent to 10 per cent in different samples of 



