American Milk- Condensing Factories. 115 
wbirh are placed the revolving fans, driven by power supplied 
from the engine. The leading features in the treatment of the milk 
are briefly as follows : — The milk, as it comes to the factory, is 
carefully examined, and, if all right, it is received and weighed. 
The cans are then placed upon the car, which runs on rails to the 
cooling-vat. Here the milk is drawn into long tin pails, 8 inches 
in diameter and 18 inches long, holding twenty quarts each. 
I About eighteen quarts are put in each pail, which is then placed 
' in the vat containing cold spring water. After the milk has been 
i cooled to 60^, the pails are immediately plunged into the water 
of the heating- vat, which has a temperature of from 185° to 
190^ Fahr. 
The best refined white sugar is then added, at the rate of four 
pounds for each pail. The pails are kept in the vat of heated 
' water about thirty minutes, when the milk is drawn into the large 
condensing pan. This pan has fifty corrugations, and is set over 
water and upon a furnace in the adjoining room. Directly over 
the pan are arranged the two large fans previously alluded to, 
which are kept in motion by machinery. The temperature of the 
milk while evaporation is going on is uniform at 160^ Fahr. 
The fans carry off the water, forcing it through ventilators, out 
of the building as fast as it is formed into vapour. Under this 
process it takes about seven hours to condense the milk, seventy- 
five per cent, of its original bulk in water being driven off. 
The faucets at each end of the pan are then opened, and the con- 
densed fluid passes through fine wire-strainers or sieves into large 
cans. These cans, when filled, are rolled away to the tables at 
the back of the room, where their contents are drawn off into 
small tin cans, holding one pound each, and then are immediately 
sealed up to exclude the air. 
The condensed milk has the consistence of thick syrup, and 
has a rich creamy taste, rather sweet, with a flavour of boiled 
milk, but by no means unpleasant. Dr. Crane informed me 
that milk thus prepared has been preserved in good order for 
years. He opened cans in my presence containing milk a year 
old, and it was apparently sound, and of good flavour. 
For shipping, this establishment packed its cans in barrels, 
! with sawdust between the packages, a form which insured their 
safe arrival in market. During the war these pound-packages 
were sold at the rate of 40 cents each, and the price paid for the 
crude milk at the factory during summer was about 5 cents per 
quart, but in winter the price ranged from 7 cents to 7^ cents 
per quart. 
At this factory, like those under the Borden process, two 
kinds of condensed milk were manufactured — that which has 
I 2 
