CHAPTER VIII 



SOME HINTS CONCERNING MILK DISTRIBUTION 



ONE of the chief difficulties to contend with in retailing milk 

 is the almost instinctive desire of the public to get their 

 milk in the early morning hours. Customers apparently 

 labor under the false impression that milk left in the early 

 morning hours is a product of the night, like the dew, or early 

 morning paper on the doorstep. As a matter of fact, milk which 

 is delivered before 8 a. m. at the customer's door is usually twenty- 

 four to thirty-six hours old. This happens because milk trains 

 do not often arrive before 8 a. m., and the milk on these trains 

 represents that milked the night before and in the early morning 

 of the day of arrival in the city. This milk is often delivered in 

 the early morning of the day following that of its arrival in the city. 

 Although we have seen that clean milk may be kept sweet on 

 ice for several weeks (see p. 22), yet we have also learned that 

 germs will develop in milk at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahren- 

 heit, or lower, and that they may increase tremendously at low- 

 temperatures in time (see pp. 4, 38). It is safer, therefore, that 

 clean milk be not sold when it is twenty-four hours old; and the 

 requirements of some medical societies certifying milk forbids its 

 sale after it is twenty-four hours old. 



The milk arriving in the city on any morning will represent 

 the night's milk of the previous day and the milk which has been 



milked very early on the morning of its arrival. Or, as in the 



162 



