EEMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 177 



These considerations have led many very earnest 

 reformers to advocate the municipalization of the 

 entire milk supply of our towns and cities. During 

 the Chicago epidemic there were a great many per- 

 sons, by no means disposed to call themselves Social- 

 ists, who supported the demand of The Chicago 

 Socialist for the municipalization of the milk supply, 

 and agreed that the milk trade should be a social 

 monopoly.' The London Fabian Society, which, 

 contrary to current opinion in this country, is a very 

 conservative organization, officially puts the case 

 for municipalization more cogently than I have seen 

 it elsewhere, in the following words: — 



"If we want good milk, let us establish our own 

 dairy farms in the country and our milk stores in 

 the city. Many of our large towns have spent 

 enormous sums of money to provide their citizens, 

 with water; why should they not also provide them 

 with milk? The arguments in favor of municipal 

 water apply with greater force to municipal milk. 

 We want municipal dairy farms in the country, 

 managed by dairy experts, and supervised by medical 

 officers and veterinary inspectors. We want care- 

 fully selected, healthy cows to give us milk; and we 

 want them kept under proper conditions. On our 

 municipal dairy farms we could see that these con- 

 ditions were fulfilled. A municipality would have 

 no interest in adding dirty water to milk to make 



