American Milk-Condensing Factories. 
107 
it was condensed milk, or butter, or cheese. Sometimes these 
conditions would continue for days, for weeks, and for months ; 
but there was no reliability on its continuing for a specified time, 
or, indeed, in different localities during the same time. The 
milk might be easily worked on one day, and on the next would 
refuse to be controlled under ordinary treatment. The fault at 
first was supposed to originate in some want of cleanliness, either 
at the factory or among those who produced and delivered the 
milk. This was a part, but not the whole of the trouble. The 
importance of cleanliness, and of what seemed to many to be 
" an absurd fastidious neatness," became apparent to Mr. Borden 
at an early stage of his investigations. He therefore instituted 
a set of rules for the government of dairymen in the care and 
management of milk ; and as he bought only such milk as would 
pass the closest scrutiny of an expert, he was able, after a time, 
to enforce an observance of his printed regulations among dairy- 
men. I shall presently refer to these rules and 'give them in 
detail, because they strike home to some of the leading prin- 
ciples for obtaining good milk, and they are such as should 
guide dairymen generally. He adopted also the practice of 
cleaning and steaming his patrons' delivery milk-cans at the 
factory, because he feared — and with good reason too — that this 
work might not be properly done at the farm. But when farmers 
had become educated, and all his conditions of cleanliness had 
been observed and carried out to the letter, milk not unfre- 
quently came to his factories, which — though apparently perfect, 
or at least so perfect as to pass the rigid scrutiny of his experts 
— was in a condition that rendered it impossible for it to be con- 
verted into a good product. The reason for this was not of easy 
solution, and it has been the cause of heavy losses and of the 
closing up of factories which were not under the immediate 
supervision of Mr. Borden. 
It may be observed here that good condensed milk is without 
doubt more reliably clean and healthy than most milk that goes 
to the city consumer. Dirty milk — milk foul with the drippings 
of the stable — cannot be condensed into a clean-flavoured product. 
The success of the condensing factory depends entirely upon the 
ability to put a fine-flavoured, perfect article into the market. 
The milk must be uniformly good. An inferior condensed milk 
is more readily detected than an inferior article of cheese. At 
least, imperfections in cheese may be tolerated, and the article 
may find a place in the market ; but a factory continuing to send 
out imperfect or badly flavoured milk must soon cease to be 
remunerative, and must inevitably close its doors. To obtain any 
success in this business there is an absolute necessity for clean 
healthy milk in the first instance ; and when a knowledge of this 
