New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-12-28

and get trusted and make assignments, and
WELD to the full those natural rights and
powers by exercising which commercial enter.
prise Is animated with its healthful and ex-
asperating uncertainty.
But the cOnquering career of the milkman IA
fettered by no such commonplace embarrass-
ments The sole tie which binds him to the IL
numbering usages of commercial man is the
chattel mortgage on bis horse and wagon;
and the horse invariably dies and his wagon
lies a stove and stranded wreck upon some
curbstone before a possible foreclosure. He
taps the fluent benefcence of the nearest
'hydrant for supplies, and then evades his
water rates. He never trusts bis victim, but
makes sure that his tickets are plenteOusly
redeemed before he will accept them as a legal
tender. No competition intimidates him, for
he owns his "route" In fee simple and
assassinates every presumptuous trespasser,
so that the milk consumer is bullied into the
consumption of the mysterious fluid which he
chooses to deliver True, there remains the
disheartening alternative of buying brick Of
deslccated milk. which must be brayed in a
mortar like any other medicine, or he can
put up with a weekly mass of that
yellOwish and ropy ointment known as
the CONDENSED milkh of commerce. But few
Christians are content to take their milk in a
pulverized or viscOus form. No cow of correct
habits Is addicted to giving dry milk OF mli-
cilaginOus milk, and the very apparent auidity
of the milkman's delivery exacts from the
imagination less exhaustive effort to connect
it in some remote way with green pastures
distended udders, and all that. With all these
advantages, and still further sheltered by the
darkness, the milkman goes forth on his de-
vastating anabasis. His chariot, which is con-
structed so as to make more noise and wake
up more people than any other form of noe
turnal disturbance which has yet been devised,
is clothed with terror as it rattles through the
streets, and, plunging with bloodthirsty whoOp
into the areas of defenseless consumers on his
"route," he disseminates a saturated solution
of assorted zymOtic diseases at twelve cents
quart in advance, reckless of chemical analy-
sis or specific levity or principalities or
powers OF the course of exchange or the bal
ance of trade or hight or depth or any other
creature.
But the trial now in progress is symptom
attic of gathering rebellion. Long years ago
Sir Isaac Newton invented the attraction of
gravitatiOn, and the fragile hydrometer has
proved the stimulating potency of unnumbered
demijohns; but never until now has the Board
of Health mustered the hardihOOd to brandsh
this weapon in the face of the aggressive milk
man. Science has now dared to step forward
and assert that with this searching implement
it can be determined whether our milk is mixed
to order or secreted by the mammary glands
of the domestic COW, and what percentage of
real milk is contained in any dilution and
whether the COW which produced this fraction
is an Ayrshire or a native, and whether she is
fed on wheat shorts brewery grains, the
febrifacient and diphtheretic slOp, and what
her hide and tallow are worth, and what par
ticular method of counting the electoral vote
her owner has discovered. But the milkmap
is fighting to the bitter end. The Doremus
family will prove that the gravity of milk is
not very specific after all; that some cows are
known to give ice-cream, some buttermilk, some
II o straight; that there are to be seen in
sample-rOOms the chrOmOs of some bright bay
and chestnut sOrrel cows which are advertised
to furnish a fair article of mllk-punch, and
that occasionally an apparently respectable
cow flavors her milk in most disgraceful way
with wild garlic and malaria.
The battle hangs in even scale. The milk
man pretends to be uncOncerned but he is
really thoughtful and discouraged. For three
or four nights past his wagon rolls in silence
as If shod with wool His whOOp has lost its
old defiance. He has a growing respect
for the placid quadruped whose secretions he
has disguised and drowned. He even thinks
of compromise, and is willing to leave the
whole matter to the Supreme Court or a joint
non partisan committee from both houses OF
Congress. He denies the right of Mr. Cronin
to dilute himself into an electoral college, and
declares that he is opposed to every form Of
homeopathic attenuation. We are encouraged to
hope that these apprehensOns of the milkman
will prove well grounded. He may suppress
this lactometric revolt, but revolutions neyers
60 backward. There will be fresh uprisings
against his tyranny for freedoms battle once
begun, bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
though bafled oft is ever two to one in favor
of the bleeding sire.