1353 
Milk Problem Yet Undertermined 
PRICE REDUCTION.—It must be admitted that 
the milk dealers and the food administrators have 
out-generaled the directing officials of the Dairy¬ 
men’s League. For some weeks the city, State and 
Federal administrators and the president of the 
League have been in conference on the price of milk. 
The one demand of the official administrators, State, 
city and Federal, has been that the farmers reduce 
the price for milk. There has been no demand from 
them that dealers reduce the high cost of distribu¬ 
tion. Yielding to their first demands, the president 
of the League consented to call the board together 
to consider the reduction of price for November. This 
the board promptly and properly voted down with a 
healthy bang. Next the president yielded to a second 
demand to call the'board to reduce the price for 
December a half a cent below the November price, 
and to agree with the dealers to accept the price 
fixed by a committee appointed by the Federal 
administrator for the following three months. It is 
said he promised to use his influence to induce the 
board to do so. After a lively debate the board 
divided, but the majority sided with the president 
and voted to authorize the* reduction for December 
and to accept the price fixed by the committee for 
three months. The farmers will have one man on 
a committee of five. 
A LOST OPPORTUNITY.—The reduction in price, 
while important to the producer, is the least of the 
things to regret. It is more of a misfortune to the 
consumer than to the farmer. It will necessarily 
result in the purchase of less feed, the destruction 
of more cows for beef, and a decreased December 
supply of milk. The greatest regret is that the 
officers surrendered without a single concession from 
the dealers. A great opportunity was lost. The 
spokesman for the producers had an opportunity to 
stand firm on his own authority and take the oppor¬ 
tunity to .say to the dealers and the administrators: 
“Milk today is produced without profit to the fanner. 
It is distributed at unnecessary cost. With the im¬ 
plements of distribution in our hands we can deliver 
milk to the people of the city from two to four cents 
a quart less than they now pay. To demon.strate this 
we will rent the facilities of distributionlfor a term 
at a reasonable rental, and the milk you now sell for 
14c to 20c a quart we will deliver to the consumer 
at 11c a quart. Until you do this or see that the 
dealers sell milk to the stores in quantity they re¬ 
quire in bottles at a reasonable cost for distribution, 
you have no right on either patriotic or economic 
grounds to ask us to sell milk for less than the 
cost of production.” 
AN UNFORTUNATE CONCESSION.—If the deal¬ 
ers were compelled to make the reduction in the 
cost of distribution, and the principle were estab¬ 
lished that they must furnish milk at reasonable 
cost to the stores, there would be some compensation 
in the concessions made by the producers, but as it 
is now we concede all and get nothing in return, and 
the humiliating part of it is that our concessions were 
demanded and secured by a coterie of public officials, 
not one of whom has the slightest experience or 
knowledge of the milk problem in any of its phases. 
STRONG LEADERS NEEDED,—With the presi¬ 
dent committed to the concession, the members of the 
board evidently felt that they could not do other¬ 
wise than yield the point, but all must realize that 
the repetition of these blunders weakens the League, 
and it must be apparent that stronger leadership is 
a necessity. No more loyal membership of a pro¬ 
ducers’ organization has ever existed in this State, 
or in this country, than the present membership of 
the Dairymen’s League. They realize that their 
future depends on the organization, and in loyalty to 
it, but loyalty alone is not enough. It must be 
managed with prudence and ability. There are 
troublous times ahead, and big constructive work 
to do. We cannot win the battles of the future, any 
more than we did the battles of the past, by making 
friends of our enemies. The Russian soldiers tried 
that scheme on the Eastern battle front of Europe, 
and the Russian army is reduced to a mob. These 
things are said in no spirit of criticism of anyone, 
but the time to express a warning is now, and before 
disaster overtakes us. The enemy is, perhaps, the 
strongest organization of capital and money in the 
world. It is represented by the best legal talent 
and the ablest men that money and organization can 
produce. The League needs its best men in its 
counsel, and its strongest champion as its spokesman. 
CAe RURAL NEW-YORKBR 
The Milk Situation Analyzed 
What Must be Done to Save It 
Part II. 
LAW AND MONOPOLY.—^The dealers’ monopoly 
and control is, to say the least, encouraged and made 
possible through law, and the rules and regulations 
of the Board of Health, whose inspectors interpret 
the law, determine the facts, and mete out the pun¬ 
ishment. In the city one of them says that a can of 
milk discovered on a delivery wagon is sour, and he 
pours it into the street. In many other sections of 
the city other drivers deliver from the same batch 
of milk without interruption. The rule is that milk 
must be pasteurized. Sometimes it is and some¬ 
times it is not. Thd rule is that it must be pasteur¬ 
ized under certain conditions, and that it must be 
delivered within a certain number of hours after 
pasteurization. Sometimes it is so delivered, and 
sometimes not. Milk may be sold in a store dipped 
from the can. It may be carried home in an open 
vessel through the street, but it must not be put 
into a bottle and closed and carried home without 
exposure. Milk may be bottled only where it is 
pasteurized. This gives the big companies the mon¬ 
opoly of bottling in the city. The law is that if 
anything can be added to or taken from milk it is 
adulterated, and the person responsible for it is 
subject to fine. Big dealers have admitted to a 
violation of this law, and it is a matter of common 
information that it is generally violated. The sys¬ 
tem of standardizing milk into C, B and A grades is 
prolific of opportunities for the big and favored 
dealers, and at the same time serves as a very ef-' 
fective means of making things unpleasant for any 
concern that is out of favoi*. Up to last year it 
was a common contention that milk bought from 
the farmer as C milk became B milk when pasteur¬ 
ized and delivered by the dealer in the city, and 
that B milk in the same way became A milk. This 
fiction meant a loss of 10 cents a hundred to the 
farmer, and an increase of two cents a quart to the 
consumer. The contention of the Board of Health 
is that the small dealers need closer watching than 
the big dealers, for the reason that prosecution 
would be more serious to the big dealer than to the 
small one. This philosophy is subject to arguments, 
but there is no dispute that the contention of the 
Board of Health gives comfort, not to say protec¬ 
tion, to the big receiver. 
GRADING AND STANDARDIZING.—The system 
of grading, standardizing and pasteurizing, as re¬ 
quired by the Board of Health, has materially helped 
the monopoly in distribution by the big dealers. Milk 
must be pasteurized, and they have the pasteurizers. 
Milk must be shipped, and they control the shipping 
cans. Under the system milk must be tested, and 
they do the testing. Milk must be graded, and they 
do the grading. There is no uniformity. There are 
no exact standards. There is no assurance of fair¬ 
ness. The practical results are arbitrary rulings, 
flagrant discriminations, and increased cost of milk. 
This is no argument against pasteurization, hygienic 
conditions or control. It is a protest against meth¬ 
ods of administration and discrimination. 
THE FARMER’S RIGHT.—The Whole system is 
uneconomic. To begin with, the farmer must make 
his own standards and prescribe his own regulations 
for the production and delivery of clean, wholesome 
milk. It is his concern to furnish the consumer 
what she wants and all she wants of it. He can be 
better trusted to do this than the dealer. The city, 
of course, has a right to prescribe the quality of milk 
It wants, but it is the business of the farmer, and 
not tlie dealer, to provide it. If left to himself, and 
paid for It, the producer for his own interest will 
produce grade and quality in excess of the city de¬ 
mand. The dealer, by refusing the farmer enough 
to encourage high quality, is responsible for the slow 
progress in the improvement of the milk supply. 
Give the producer the responsibility and reward and 
progress will be more rapid in the future. The 
farmer must pasteurize, treat, cool and ship his own 
milk. He must bring it to the city and sell it at 
wholesale to anyone who wants to buy it and pay 
pay for it. He must provide his own implements for 
treatment and shipment and delivery. He must own 
and control plants for making up the sin*plus into 
by-products, and the Board of Health must he pro¬ 
hibited from destroying milk that is available for 
the manufacture of by-products. 
DIRECT TRADE.—In the city every grocery store, 
delicatessen store, butcher store or bakery that 
wishes to deliver milk under proper regulations, 
must have a full supply at wholesale rates direct 
from the producers without intermediate profit 
The poor and frugal people of the city must be able 
to find milk in these stores in evei’y nook and cor¬ 
ner of the city, either loose in cans or sealed in 
bottles. If the rich and proud desire a wagon ser¬ 
vice with liveried attendants, they should be per¬ 
mitted to have it, but they should not he permitted 
to Impose their system on the poor and frugal fam¬ 
ilies that are anxious to save in their food supply. 
Consumers buying milk cheaper from the stores 
should be required to make a deposit for the bottle 
in order to save losses, and the storekeepers, of 
course, would be permitted to deliver milk to local 
customers just as it does other food products. The 
cost of milk at the farm has always varied from 
month to month, but the dealer has always charged 
the consumer the uniform high level during the 
whole year. In the new system the price will be 
low to the consumer when it is low at the farm, so 
that over the whole year the consumer will pay only 
the cost of production in the country and delivery. 
This will give city children cheap milk for at least 
six months in the year, and with this inducement 
the city children will dispose of the surplus bugaboo. 
REDUCING EXPENSE.—Under this system milk 
could be pasteurized and delivered to the stores in 
the city for l%c a quart in addition to the price to 
the producers, and in bottles the deliveries could 
be made at 2^c per quart. The stores are willing 
to deliver at one cent a quart, so that when the 
farmer gets 7c the price to the consumer would be 
9%c for loose milk, and 10^/4c for bottled milk. 
This would be a saving of two to four cents a quart 
on present prices, or an estimated annual saving of 
two million dollars, without considering the sleight 
of hand performances of the smaller bottles and 
other grades. City plants for the care and distribu¬ 
tion of milk will be a necessity of the system. 
These plants mu.st be located with a view of economy 
in receiving and distributing. Milk should be de¬ 
livered from the car directly into the plant, and 
some way should be developed to distribute milk 
at wholesale at less expense than the present sys¬ 
tem involves. This milk is handled in the early 
morning, when there is little if any local traffic, and 
the trolley lines could be profitably used in these 
early morning hours for the distribution of this milk, 
with a great saving in delivery cost. 
REDUCING EXCESS PROFITS.—Delivery of 
milk from the farm to the consumer’s door through' 
this system would be conducted at the actual cost 
of the service, without .speculation or excessive 
profits. The farmer is a producer and he will be 
content with a fair price for his labor and a fair 
profit on his farm investment. Like other producers, 
he must develop a system of distribution for his 
own product, and control it himself, but his business 
is not distribution, and his best interests will be 
conserved by distributing at cost and confining his 
profits to the productive end. Receiving a fair profit 
for production, he will operate the farm to its full 
capacity and produce more and better milk. To in¬ 
crease demand he will lower the price to the con¬ 
sumer to the level of returns from by-products, and 
the consumer w’ill benefit from a system that encour¬ 
ages the best possible production. 
DEPRESSED INDUSTRY.—The system that has 
so long prevailed in the New York district h^s seri¬ 
ously depressed the dairy Industry of the State and 
adjacent tei-ritory. The system has kept farmers 
poor, and city children hungry, and it has kept farm¬ 
ers without means to properly finance the new plan 
for them.selves. In a de.sperate effort, however, to 
escape the tyranny of the old system, they have in 
many places built co-operative plants and creameries 
for themselves, and through the organization of the 
Dairymen’s League they have, during the last year 
after the first fight, succeeded in having a voice in 
the making of prices for their own product With 
the high co.st of food and labor and other supplies, 
it would not have been possible for them to have 
remained in the business otherwise. Even the prices 
received now do not return the laborer on the farm 
wages equal to the common laborer of the city, and 
there is no more skilled labor required in any line 
than is necessary in the operation of a farm for 
milk production. From a broad view of the sub¬ 
ject, it is, therefore, evident that the advance paid 
the farmers during the last year has been of greater 
indirect benefit to the city con.sumer than of a direct 
benefit to the country producer. The little advance 
has kept the farmer on the farm producing milk 
and furnished a supply for the city that would be 
lacking without this little incentive for the farmer 
to continue production. 
It has been claimed that soda lye is a remedy for 
worms in sheep and hogs. The Agricultural Depart¬ 
ment tried it according to direction's on the manufac¬ 
turers’ labels and found the worms increased in num¬ 
bers. So manufacturers are warned to remove labels 
making any such claims. The soda lye worm claim 
seems to be a lie. 
