786 
Statements showing the amount specifically appropriated for the 
milk-inspection service, and the work accomplished, are appended.® 
Time and space will not permit a discussion of the claim made by 
some that the efforts of the Government to bring about an improve- 
ment in the milk supply have resulted in an increase in the cost of 
milk to the consumer. The increase in the price of milk is in keeping 
with the increase in the price of almost everything else and is terri- 
torially too widely spread to have been brought about simply by the 
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, hoAvever, 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 
assisted the health department in discovering outbreaks of typhoid 
fever and scarlet fever, due to milk infection. Of these outbreaks, 
seven were of typhoid fever and two of scarlet fever. ^ And the milk- 
mspection service alone has, after the discovery of such outbreaks, 
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 
between the milk supply and infant mortality; the death rate of 
infants is the commonly accepted standard by which the efficiency of 
® See page 792. 
® For details as to these outbreaks, see page 51 et seq[. 
