288 . REPORT OF THE CHEMIST OF THE 
that the market price of milk, of cream and of butter depends chiefly 
upon the price of butter-fat, and that other constituents have so 
little influence that they can practically be neglected. 
“There is one other important dairy product to be considered, 
and that is cheese. Does the same principle hold with this? I be- 
lieve it does, for on no other basis can 1 reconcile market prices all 
over the world.” 
He then goes on to show by actual market quotations that cheese 
vaiseS In price according to its richness in fat, all the way from 11 
cents per pound for whole-milk, fancy cheese down to I to 2% 
cents a pound for full-skim cheese. Anticipating some objections. 
raised to the method of reasoning as applied to the fat basis as a 
method of paying for milk at cheese-factories, he continues: “I 
cannot leave this subject without referring to some of the objections 
made to its use in cheese-factories. It is urged that because casein 
and fat are intimately mixed together in cheese, they bring the same 
price per pound when sold, and so should be given the same price in 
calculating the value of milk that is to be used for this purpose. If 
this is true, the water which comprises a larger portion of cheese 
than the casein should be treated in the same way, and worthless 
constitutents in any product should have the same value as the 
mixture in which they occur. It is absurd, on the face of it, as it 
gives entirely different values to the same constituent according to 
the product considered. It makes the casein, water and fat worth 
each about one cent per pound in milk, the same constituent worth 
30 cents per pound in butter and anywhere from I to I1 cents per 
pound in cheese, according to the proportions in which they are 
mixed. Whereas, the relative value plan gives consistent values 
invall, 
‘Again, it is said that the life-sustaining power of a pound of 
casein is about the same as a pound of fat, and that they should 
therefore have about the same value; but it must be borne in mind 
that the nutritive value and the market value of foods have no rela- 
tion to each other. You can buy nutrients in corn meal cheaper 
than you can in wheat flour. Maple sugar costs you two or three 
times as much as beet sugar, although the two have identically the 
same effect. All of these things are controlled by the universal 
law of supply and demand, and have nothing to do with their rela- 
tive food value. 
“When any article has a high value for any special purpose, that 
fixes the price which must be paid for it for all other purposes. 
