The Country Milk Company 
A Discussion of the Milk Situation 
Part II. 
LEAGUE MANAGEMENT. — The Dairyman’s 
League needs such definite practical organization 
that once clearly under way it will operate of its own 
momentum. It will not depend on any one man or 
set of men. Such an organization was ordered at the 
first annual meeting of members in 1916, but the pur¬ 
pose was defeated. The making and changing of by¬ 
laws is now in the hands of officials whom the rules 
are intended to govern. It does not belong there. Men 
should not be permitted to make laws for farm or¬ 
ganizations that will make it possible to keep t.hem- 
.-(‘Ives in positions when they once get there. Under 
I resent rules the president of the League may be 
an autocrat. By proxies he coiild control elections. 
I^e could build Tip a ring of favorites. The officers 
can vote their own salaries; prescribe their own 
time for work, and check fheir own expen.ses. Sooner 
or later privileges of this kind will be abused. 
PUBLICITY HELPFUT..—Full and detailed pub¬ 
licity is the best safeguard. The members should 
have full information. In well-organized fann a.s- 
sociations an audit committee is appointed, no mem¬ 
ber of which is an officer, to make and publish regu¬ 
lar detailed reports. It is one of the most important 
committees. The more democratic we make our 
farm organizations, the surer they are to live. 
SELLING MITiK.—The principal need of the 
l.eague is a business organization to sell milk and 
increase the consumption of it. This work should 
not be undertaken by an inexperienced officer elected 
.at a general meeting. The members at general 
meeting should elect a chairman of the executive 
committee, and this committee should hire the best 
man it could find to run the sales department. He 
should have authority to hire and dismiss his own 
help and fix its compensation. It will be his duty to 
find ways to increase the consumption of milk and 
milk products. He will have supplies of milk and 
milk products available in a city plant and see that 
they ai’e economically distributed in every nook and 
corner of the city. He will see that milk is sold by 
the can or bottle or glass; and ho will devise new 
v;ays to distribute it cheaply and temptingly to the 
people of the city. He will have facilities to manu¬ 
facture his daily sur]»lus; and the products of New 
York State milk will be displayed wherever food is 
sold. He will find the cheapest and most efficient 
way to deliver milk; and he would standardize the 
exiict cost of such distribution. He will allow dealers 
a fair profit only for their work, and producers and 
consumers will get the benefit of the saving. He 
will have no surplus bugaboo. When milk is plenti¬ 
ful he would sell it cheap to the consumer, and in¬ 
crease the use of it. Wiien it is scarce he will in¬ 
crease the price to the farmer to encourage larger 
; reduction. 
EXECUTIVE OVERSIGHT.—The brnsiness of the 
executive committee will be to see that he does these 
things; and if he does not to put a man in his place 
who will. The man big enough for the job will be 
cheap at any reasonable price. The right man will 
lave an assistant coming on about as good as him¬ 
self, and ready to take his place when needed. Big 
men are not afraid of losing their jobs. 
LOCAL ORGANIZATION.—This business mana¬ 
ger will have a strong local organization in every 
shipping center and fiourishing fann-owned plants 
in every locality where they could be operated pro¬ 
fitably. He will have a competent man in each place 
to inspect the milk and test for butter fat, and to see 
that the producer gets paid for the quantity and 
quality delivered. He will see that butter and 
cheese are furnished producers at their shipping 
station from factories within the League zone. No 
oleo will be sold to the members of this organization. 
He will have manufacturing plants located and oper¬ 
ated in the ten-itory where milk products will be 
manufactured in flush seasons to meet the demand 
for them at the proper time. He will develop the 
dairy business in the smaller cities of the State on 
the same plan. 
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES.—All this is coming. 
It is not far off. It must come. There is no other 
way to save the great dairy interests of the State 
of New York. Once successful, this plan will become 
j eneral over the country. The consumption of milk 
will be multiplied. Dairy herds will restore the im¬ 
poverished lands, and assets of the dairy farms will 
increase with the pride of the farmer in his profit¬ 
able business. 
HARD WORK'NEEDED.—All this will not come 
by magic. It will not come without trial and work 
i nd temporary disappointments. Someone will make 
sacrifices for it. But it will come. It is the logical, 
the sensible and the business thing to do. The in- 
“Ghe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
terests of both producer and consumer demand it. 
Children must not starve and perish in the city while 
the daily industry disappears in the country that 
selfish middlemen may grow fat. 
FULL STRENGTH NEEDED.—No subsidiary an¬ 
nex to the League will ever accomplish these results. 
The full strength of the League is needed for the 
task. Let us not send a boy to do a m.i..’s work. 
T/f-e suhsidiarv companies causo (Ustntst and sus¬ 
picion. They are a wealcncss. The League, under 
strong management, iciU inspire confidenee. It is 
The maximum ..irength of the memhership. Let us 
drop suhsidiary associations, and companies, and, 
milh commissions. Put the League to the front and 
Iceep it there. rornyuLicS we grow impatient with 
delay. Selfishness difc,he irtens even the optimist for 
a time; but looking back over the 3 'ears we witness 
the progress of humanity and cooperation. We have 
had a taste of cooperative success in the League. 
The plain farmers are ready to do their part. 
Nothing is to be gained by fear or secrecy. Good 
jdans, able leadership, and wise policies will develop 
with full information and frank discussion. Given 
’hese, the Dairymen’s League will become the great¬ 
est cooperative organization of farmers in the world. 
The May Price of Milk 
The Federal Milk Commission has set the price of 
milk to producers at .$2.40 per hundred pounds for 
the month of May with the explanation that this is 
the last allowance of 12 cents per hundred for the 
recoup on the December price. This seems to indi¬ 
cate that the May price was fixed at $2..24. The 
price is based on .3% milk with four cents extra for 
each one-tenth of fat. This is a decrease of four 
cents per hundred on the April price. 
The commission actually got up courage enough 
to reduce the retail price of bottled milk to the con¬ 
sumer by one cent a quart For M.ay the consumer’s 
price for B milk will be 1.3 cents from the wagons 
and 12^2 cents from stores. For A grade the price 
is 15 cents against 10 cents for April. If we all live 
long enough we may be able to persuade a milk 
commission that milk can be distribiited at the cost 
of production; but the time for such accompli.shmeut 
is not very near. For April the producer gets 5.4S 
cents per quart for B milk; and 5.S cents for A milk, 
riiis is figured on .3..3 per cent milk, which is fully 
up to the average of city delivery. The farmer gets 
thirty-two hundredths or one-third of a cent extra 
for A grade when he gets anything; and the dealer 
gets two cents. That is a 16-cent dollar. Why a 
Federal or State commission should sanction such a 
price or custom we are at a loss to know; Imt we 
fire glad to report for once that the commission has 
made a deeper cut for the dealer than to the pro¬ 
ducer, little though it be. 
Notes on the Wheat Situation 
Several things have happened recently to bring 
the wheat .situation to a head. An effort was made 
in Congress to raise the price of wheat to $2.r)0 per 
bu. at the farm. A bill establishing that price 
passed the U. S. Senate by a large majority. It was. 
generally supported by all Senators from the agri¬ 
cultural States, and opposed mostly by New England 
and the manufacturing localities. The House of 
Representatives, however, voted by a large majority 
against this proposition, and that seems to have 
killed it for this year. Even had it passed the Hou.se, 
it was clearly understood that President Wikson 
would veto the plan. The argument which seems to 
have killed the bill in the House was the under- 
.standing that this Government has, through its rep- 
7 esentatives, agreed to sell to our Allies a large 
quantity of wheat at a certain definite price, this 
price based on our jiresent figure of $2.20 per bushel. 
That seemed to satisfj’’ most of the Representatives 
from the South and the mantifacturing States, and 
thus the effort to give our farmers a fairer price for 
their grain was killed. 
Now comes notice from Washington that after the 
15th, of May wheat remaining in the hands of 
farmers will be taken by the Government. It is 
stated that enough wheat will be left for each 
farmer for seed purposes and for home supplies of 
flour, but any amount in excess of these require¬ 
ments will be taken and paid for at the present fixed 
1 rice. As usual, this notice from Washington is 
rather curt and businesslike, and not much explana¬ 
tion is given. We have tried to find out how the 
order will be enforced, and particulars about it, but 
thus far have not been able to obtain details. One 
critici.sm we have with the Food Administration is 
the fact that it seems unwilling to give fair explana¬ 
tion for many of these rulings or orders. We have 
t’ied repeatedly to obtain such information, and 
have offered our .services in an effort to explain the 
651 
situation to the farmers, but for some reason which 
we cannot understand, the Administration does not 
seem to care to have these clear explanations made. 
In the meantime we are told that the Prime Min- 
i.ster of Australia has come to this country in an 
effort to dispose of the great accumulations of wheat 
in Australia. There are something like 200,000,000 
bus. of wheat tied up in storage there through failure 
to obtain shipping in order to carry it to Europe. 
This grain is rotting, or being destroyed by vermin, 
and another harvest is now coming on. The Aus- 
Iralian Government, as we understand, has guaran¬ 
teed a price of $1 i^er bu. for this grain, and the 
authorities in Australia hope to induce this country 
to take this guarantee off' their hands and thus ob¬ 
tain the grain at that low figure. If it can be trans¬ 
ported, this wheat will be poured into the country 
through the Pacific ports, and either used here in 
competition with our own supply, or shipped to 
Europe. Small supplies of this grain have been 
coming in sailing vessels, but it is now understood 
that the .Japanese government has turned over a part 
of its fleet for the purpose of bringing this wheat 
into our country. 
Receivers to Pay Over 60 Per Cent 
The receivers of the Mutual-McDermott Dairy 
corporation have declared a first dividend to unse¬ 
cured creditors of 10 per cent It is reported from 
some sections that attempts are being made to buy 
up the farmers’ claims for 10 to 25 cents on the 
dollar. There is something like $780,000 of unsecured 
claims. The trustees have $500,000 in cash, and ex¬ 
pect this will be increased to exceed .$600,000. Out of 
this, of course, the expense of the proceedings must 
be paid; but it is .safe to conclude that these creditors 
will realize something better than 60 per cent of 
iheir claims. This is much better than was at first 
expected. Creditors are entitled to all the I'eceivers 
can pay, and our advice to them would be to avoid 
the allurements of the speculators. 
Selecting Alfalfa Seed 
We wish .some (or .several) Eastern experiment 
station would try the following expei'iment: 
Transplant 500 or 1,000 roots of the new Alfalfa 
varieties and give them fair culture. They will make 
a good seed crop. Save this seed and use it for seed¬ 
ing a larger space, and keep on using the home-grown 
seed. Of course we know that the u.sual advice is 
to use Alfalfa seed from the Far West, but a little 
observation on our own farm leads us to think that 
home-grown Alfalfa seed may be as practical and 
useful as home-grown corn seed. Surely if a farmer 
wanted to give a large crop of corn he would use 
well-selected seed grown in his own latitude or local¬ 
ity. While the theory may be opposed to general 
belief, we think there may be something of the same 
value in locally-grown Alfalfa. At any rate, it is 
worth trying, and the transplanting experiment alone 
would be worth more than its cost. 
How Savin.g Daylight Works with the 
Farmer 
Before the clock was turned an hour ahead, we used 
to get up at 5 A. M. This meant that it was just about 
daylight. Now we still get up at 5 A. M. and do most 
(if our milking and other chores by lantern light. I 
think that most people will agree with me when I say 
that 5 A. M. by the old time is as early as a civilized 
man ought to get up in the morning. If no outside 
business interfered, we might lie in bed an hour longer, 
and still do our work by daylight. But the milk-ship¬ 
ping station people get up an hour earlier like every¬ 
body else. So the milk must be at the station in time. 
T'hen the schools begin their sessions an hour earlier, 
and we must get the children there at virtually eight 
oVlock. In our case, w'e conti'act with the village school 
rather over two miles away, and for that reason alone, 
we must conform to the new time. 
But I suppose that we should cheer up—the worst 
is still to come. By and by haying will come along, and 
then wo will still be getting up in the unholy hours of 
the morning. When we get our chores done, the grass 
V. ill still be drenched with dew, and it will be folly to 
put the mower at work until the dew is gone. Then in 
the afternoon, at four o’clock by the old time, or five 
by the new, just when the hay is fit to go in the barn, 
we must quit business and do the chores. The cows 
must be milked regularly at each end of the day. Also 
the hired help have to put in a full day’s time. There¬ 
fore we will prowl around in the dawning, with the wet 
and chill that goes with it, and then leave our dried hay 
in the fields in the afternoon when we might just as 
well get it in as not. All this is just because some lazy 
chap in the city hasn’t ambition enough to get up in 
the morning without a law to make him do so. 
J. GRANT MORSE. 
