The Real Trouble With the Milk Situation 
No More “Investigations” Needed 
DISCOURAGING CONDITIONS.—The Legisla¬ 
ture has another bill to investigate milk. No matter 
whether this measure is proposed in good faith or 
as a subterfuge, the situation is discouraging. The 
milk problem is simple, and yet everyone in position 
to help persists in doing everything except the one 
thing that would bring relief. We know what is 
the matter now. We know that milk can be taken 
from the farmer’s hands, pasteurized and sold to 
the consumer in New York City at a cost of three 
cents per quart above the price to the farmer for 
loose milk, and five cents for bottled milk We 
know that milk is being distributed in Philadelphia 
today at substantially these prices. It is not done 
in New York because we have a complicated, extra¬ 
vagant and wasteful trust-controlled system to sup¬ 
port, with power and influence and temptation 
enough to prevent (he adoption of a modern econo¬ 
mic and efficient system. We can talk and organize 
and investigate until doomsday, but if we permit the 
milk trust to control the distribution and charge 
what it pleases for the service, then the milk prob¬ 
lem will remain unsolved with us. So long as the 
milk trust is licensed and authorized to maintain 
its expensive system and pay big dividends on 
watered stock, just so long will the consumer be 
obliged to pay high prices for milk, and so long will 
the producer be confronted with low prices and a 
surplus. 
CONTROL OF DISTRIBUTION.—For the most 
part the trust controls the implements of distribu¬ 
tion. You cannot carry milk without cans. The 
trust owns the cans. You cannot distribute un- 
pasteurized milk in New York. The trust owns the 
pasteurizers. For years the city has done everything 
in its power to discourage the production of milk. 
It has done everything it could do to increase the cost 
of it. It has fostered a monopoly in the distribution 
of it, and now it puts up a howl because it has to pay 
for its own whistle. This is a hopeful sign for the 
producer. Most of the consumer’s fault is due to 
ignorance and the rest to indifference, while the 
shoe pinches the producer. The consumer will now 
be in a frame of mind to help the solution of the 
problem. 
THE ONE REMEDY.—Last week a State Senator 
came to ask us what could be done, if anything, 
to relieve the strike quickly. We gave the only sure 
remedy for temporary relief. “Pass a bill quickly 
to authorize a business man to commandeer pasteur¬ 
ization plants and milk cans: and in 24 hours the 
city will have its full supply of milk at from two 
to six cents a quart less than the consumer is now 
paying. The farmers will get their price, and the 
city will save $25,000,000 in a year.” Instead, the 
Legislature proposes aonther investigation. I" a 
suspicion of disgust creeps into these lines it will 
only express the sentiment we feel. Either our 
law-makers do not know what to do, or they lack 
courage to do anything effective. 
A NEEDED CHANGE.—We have gone far beyond 
the investigation stage. We know the cost of pro¬ 
duction. We know there is not a man in the city, 
no matter what his capital or ability, who can go 
on a dairy farm and produce milk with hired labor 
without losing money under present conditions. If 
any of them want to try it. we will gladly furnish 
the facilities. We also know the cost of distribu¬ 
tion. We know the cost is now too high; and if 
facilities are made available, we will guarantee to 
demonstrate that the price farmers ask can be paid 
and money saved to the consumer besides. 
AN OLD STORY.—There has not been a day in 
40 years that the milk trust has not openly violated 
the Donnelly act. Practically every industry in the 
State except farming violates*that law daily. Milk 
dealers were indicted under it once, but never tried. 
The law was a contradiction to the co-operative law 
that the State fostered and encouraged for years. 
It was properly revised to harmonize with the co¬ 
operative law. The fuss about it now is all camou¬ 
flage. It was never enforced against others. Why 
should farmers be especially subjected to it now? 
A NEW ORDER COMES.—The real cause of all 
this trouble is that a new order of things is here, 
and people do not know it. Farmers have discovered 
that they have power, and they are learning how to 
use it. They propose to know what it costs them 
to produce food, and they are going to put that price 
on it. At least they will bargain for it. “How much 
will you give?” is a question of the past. They are 
^ V <1 ry '«• i*/ -s; » •> t »» f » ,/w. 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
going to run the farm as a business at a profit. 
They will no longer work their wives and children 
and themselves without wages. 
THE POINT AT ISSUE.—This is the crux of the 
whole situation. Here is where the shoe pinches. 
The farmer is no longer satisfied to be coddled 
Appropriations to educate him to increased produc¬ 
tion will no longer satisfy him. He wants a price 
for what he px-oduces now to enable him to live in 
decency and comfort, and to educate his children 
and give them some of the comforts and enjoyments 
that city children enjoy. Only six years ago men 
in agricultural positions in this State told us this 
was a nice theoiy, but that it was unpractical and 
could not be accomplished. Now we know H is 
coming, and as the Jewish people on the East Side 
of of New Yoi*k said to George Pei’kins, “we are 
going for it to win, and God help the man who 
stands in our way.” 
y 
Soldiers Are Not Revolutionists 
Of course the few months in France will leave pro¬ 
found impressions with most of the boys. But I do not 
sec how they ai-e likely to be affected in a way to revo¬ 
lutionize our social or business life. So far as I happen 
to know a few boys on the other side, they are eager to 
get home and drop into substantially the niche they 
were occupying before the war. Even the dullest will 
have a wider outlook. A lot of the intoleimnce of 
ignorance will have been brushed away. (If we could 
only make that unanimous!) No doubt many of the 
boys will be more self-reliant and assertive, and the pol¬ 
iticians will have something to work on for the next 50 
years. My own idea is (pardon the slang) “outside of 
that they are all right.” 
Our one boy is on the other side. I think that he is 
a good type of the American boy who has had the ad¬ 
vantages of schooling and knocking around a good bit, 
trying to make his way in business. Just now, or 
rather when the last letter was written, hi only thought 
was to get back to .“the good old U. S. A.” and get to 
earning again. He wants to put France, and all that it 
represents, behind him, as far and as fast as possible. 
His ideas have been quickened and broadened along the 
line of his life work (plant breeding and flower-seed 
growing), and at one time he expected to remain in 
France for at least a few months after the war, to get 
first-hand informatou at some of the places where “they 
do these things better.” I think that here is a good av¬ 
erage American boy. Eager to drop a fine business open¬ 
ing to do his bit, when he felt that he was needed, but 
just as eager to drop everything connected with the 
army when the war is won. These young men with 
high ideals, and good common sense, are not going to 
“fall for” any radical social experiments, in my opinion. 
New York. geokge Arnold. 
“Farms for the Soldiers” 
On page 15, under the above title. R. B. of Maryland 
advocates that the Government, through its “Farm Loan 
Bank,” advance capital to returning soldiers to enable 
them to be “put on the road to a more comfortable liv¬ 
ing than otherwise would be possible.” Every class of 
people in this country are willing that the Government 
should assist returning soldiers to get started in posi¬ 
tions that will lead to useful and profitable employment. 
No other class of people in this country are as ready to 
help their competitors in business, their fellow farmers, 
as are those who get their living from tilling the soil, 
and it is not because of any desire to have a “closed 
shop” in farming that the numerous protests from the 
agricultural press and practical farmers are against the 
singling out of farming as the one occupation to which 
the Government proposes to assist soldiers in getting a 
start. 
These thoughtful men realize and see the disaster that 
will follow if a larger percentage than is adequate to 
supply the deficiency on the farm, are encouraged to go 
into a business with which they are partly or entirely 
unfamiliar. It is just as necessary and just as practical 
that the Government should help finance those returning 
soldiers who desire to become lawyers, preachers, ma¬ 
sons, carpenters or blacksmiths. As a matter of fact, it 
takes longer to equip a man properly to be a successful 
fanner than almost any other occupation or profession 
Those returning soldiers who go on to farms, unless they 
are farmers by training, are bound to be disappointed. 
IIow many of these stalwart young Americans who, in 
returning to industry, and justly, feel they are entitled 
to especial consideration, realize they are choosing a 
profession that is going to place them as “the last man” 
in the procession of life? It hurts me to make such a 
statement as that about •> profession that is so dear to 
many, yet after careful analysis of the whole industrial 
life. I can arrive at no other conclusion. Just a few 
illustrations that might be multiplied by thousands: 
First, when war was declared, how many actual 
farmers were placed in positions to direct the production 
of food, when it was known from the start that “ food 
would win the war?” None. A railroad man was se¬ 
lected to direct the railroads, trained organizers were 
selected to organize the manufacturing industries. The 
135 
Government said by implication that there are no farm¬ 
ers competent to act as directors of food production ; Ave 
will use our bureaucrats. 
Second, a law was passed creating the New York 
State “Food Commission” as a “war measure.” (I 
wonder if it should not have been called a “political 
measure”?) Who were appointed on that commission? 
A university president, a labor leader, a practical pol¬ 
itician. There are three steps in the food problem : 
Production, handling and consumption. Again the im¬ 
plication, no farmer capable of representing the food 
producers. 
Third, the spectacle of the mayor and district attorney 
going to Albany to get a State law passed making 
farmers criminals because the farmers demanded cost 
price for their milk, and playing into the hands of the 
milk trust, who are allowed to chai-ge as much for de¬ 
livering a quart of milk as the farmers ask to raise the 
cow, grow her feed, take care of her and ship the milk 
to the city. At the same time there was a strike of the 
freight-handlers, on the docks demanding an eight-hour 
day and 90 per cent more per hour for labor than the 
farmers receive for four per cent milk, and yet no one 
proposes to go anyAvhere to make laws that would 
make criminals of these labor union men because they 
strike. 
These illustrations clearly set forth the attitude of 
the rest of the community toward the farmers. Re¬ 
cently the duly accredited and elected representatives 
of organized agriculture applied for passports to go to 
Europe to study the needs of agriculture at the time of 
the peace conference. Passports were refused these 
representatives of agriculture, with the information that 
the bureaucrats from Washington would represent farm¬ 
ers. What happened when the representatives of organ¬ 
ized labor asked for passports to a similar mission ? Were 
they denied passports? Were they told they could not send 
their own men to act for them, but that the Govern¬ 
ment Avould send bureaucrats to look out for labor? 
No, no; labor was given passports and allowed to go. 
Looking into the future I can see no encouragement of 
any near change in this attitude of the rest of the coun¬ 
try toward the “farmer who feeds them all.” 
The mechanic in the town, the man in the factory, or 
on the railroad, or the man in the office who works 
from six to eight hours per day, with good pay for the 
time they work, are going to keep the man on the farm 
working 10 to 14 hours per day at a very Ioav wage per 
hour worked, so they can have a lot of time for their 
own enjoyment and still be able to buy cheap food pro¬ 
duced by cheap farm labor. It is for this purpose of 
continuing the production of cheap food that the public 
or goA r ernmental officials are backing this plan to steer 
the returning soldiers onto farms away off in the wilder¬ 
ness of stumps, swamps and deserts. 
Of course there is no very effective way to block what 
looks to us farmers like a species of bunko game, the 
propaganda which is carried on under the expense of 
the Government and by those same bureaucrats Avho 
think the farmers are incompetent to represent their 
own business in local, State and National affairs. Per¬ 
haps we farmers need the fighting spirit of these return¬ 
ing soldiers to cerrect the present attitude of the public 
toward farmers. h. r. taljiage. 
Long Island. 
Protest Against This Quarantine 
The florist trade throughout the United States is 
deeply disturbed by the action of the Federal Horticul¬ 
tural Board in declaring a plant quarantine, effective 
June 1. which is so sweeping that all but a very limited 
list of plants, roots and bulbs are denied entrance into 
the country. Under Quarantine Regulation No. 37, only 
lily bulbs, lily of the valley, hyacinths, tulips. Narcissus 
and Crocus may be brought in. Fruit tree stocks, cut¬ 
tings and scions of fruit trees. Manetti, Multiflora and 
Rugosa rose stocks are the only plants allowed entry. 
Just why it is safe to admit rose stocks, but not the 
same stocks Avith an Ophelia or Ivillarney or any other 
rose grafted or budded upon them, the board does not 
explain, nor are we told why a Narcissus root may 
enter, but not a Gladiolus or snowdrop. Of course 
there is no admittance for Azaleas, Rhododendrons, and 
a great variety of other shrubs used for outside plant¬ 
ing and for forcing. Stricken France and devastated 
Belgium. Avho have in the past sold such stock to us, are 
thus cut off, in their days ot want and poverty, from 
the great generous markets or the LTnited States. The 
reason given for this prohibition is the fear of insect 
pests, for Avhose detection and destruction we are al¬ 
ready employing a host of inspectors. The Society of 
American Florists and the Nurserymen’s Association 
have presented their views before the Horticultural 
Board without making any impression, and are now 
endeavoring to Avork as individuals upon Congressmen 
against this sAveeping quarantine. It is not merely men 
who have invested millions in trades that appeal to the 
beauty and betterment of the world Avho are thus to 
suffer from the dictum of five officials. There are 
humble toilers in the dripping forests of Colombia, on 
the broad sweep of the African veldt, and far away 
under the Southern Cross, whose livelihood is threat¬ 
ened by this order, while many an American cottage and 
farmstead will lose in beauty because of the plants that 
are not. As for foreign orchids aud all the gorgeous 
exotics that beautify great public and private conserva¬ 
tories. they are shut out absolutely—evidently viewed 
by these officials as undesirable aliens. 
