717 
enactment or proposed enactment of laws for the improvement of the 
milk supply. As a matter of fact, too, very few producers of milk 
in this vicinity have any accurate idea of the actual cost of produc- 
tion or of the net increase in the cost, if any, brought about by the 
enforcement of existing dairy regulations. Not knowing the cost of 
production, the individual producer can not fix intelligently the 
lowest price at which milk must be sold in order to produce a fair 
profit, but is guided by general impressions only and by prevailing 
custom. He does undoubtedly know, however, that the cost of pro- 
duction has been increased by higher prices for foodstuffs and for 
labor; his monthly expenditures must show this. If he proposes to 
increase the price of milk merely in proportion to the increase in the 
cost of production and to the increase in the cost of the farmer’s liv- 
ing, the public should not complain. But the increase should be fairly 
and frankly stated, and the necessity for it should not be used un- 
fairly as a club with which to beat down future legislation for the 
improvement of the milk supply. 
RESULTS. 
The results of the milk-inspection service must not be measured 
by bacterial counts or chemical analyses. These are mere incidents. 
The purpose of the service is to prevent sickness and to save human 
lives, and by its efficiency in accomplishing these ends it must be 
judged. In the first place, then, the milk-inspection service has as- 
sisted the health department in discovering outbreaks of typhoid 
fever and scarlet fever, due to milk infection. Of these outbreaks, 
seven w T ere of typhoid fever and two of scarlet fever.® And the 
milk-inspection service alone has, after the discovery of such out- 
breaks, enabled the health department usually to locate the very 
focus of infection, and commonly to do so in time to take effective 
action to cut short the progress of the disease. 
While the relation between the milk supply and the spread of the 
diseases named above is important, it is less so than is the relation be- 
tween the milk supply and infant mortality ; the death rate of infants 
is the commonly accepted standard by which the efficiency of the 
milk- inspection service of any community is measured. It may be 
claimed, however, and with some show of propriety, that many fac- 
tors other than improvement in the milk supply have been at work 
to reduce the number of infantile deaths ; or that a diminishing birth 
rate may account for the lessening of the infantile death rate, com- 
puted as that death rate perforce is, upon the total population and 
® For details as to these outbreaks, see page 49. 
