The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-11-20

supply for Single Days Use-Worly ~
the Buying Agents--Care of M5l g.,
Transits-Dairies in the City-Daneers
from tuberculosis.
New York Sum-
Among the pleasing thoughts with
which the summer boarder diverts him
self during his vacation on some remote
larln no other seems quite so we'll founded
IN reality as the one that the milk he
drinks there ON the farm-milk from the
pans That stand in rows down in the
spring and in the trough through which
the spring water runs unceasingly-is
milk, sure enough. He saw it taken from
the COW that stood with her head in q
rack and switched her tail across the neck
OIL man or maid who squeezed and pulled
Ohe teats. He saw the milk strained into
the pans and the pans placed where the
moving water would cool them. There
was no adulteration or dilution about
That milk, and the reader will perhaps
smack his lips as he remembers how
pleasant it was to feel sorry for his friends
cooped up in the city, with only restau-
rant or corner grocery milk to drink.
while he was drinking milk that was
milk.
Nevertheless, one has only to follow the
milk supply of the city from it's sources
to the consumer to learn that the pleas
ure of drinking the back country milk
WAS due solely to the Imagination of the
drinker, and further that the chances o
getting milk infected with deadly germs
are very much greater on the farm than
of as the groceries Of ''the great and
wicked city,
An interesting story. from whatever
point it is viewed, is that of New York 8
milk supply. Its quantity, for instance,
is something not readily realized, for in
a single day more than 10000 COWS must
yield their product, and if all the milk
pals could be brought together they
would fill pond two feet deep covering
any regular block between Fifth and
Sixth avenues and Washington square
and the Park. That would make very
fine pond for the sailing of a model yacht.
or it would float score of shoal draught
Mississippi River steam boats To be
precise, the pond would be 1856 feet long
by 200 wide and feet deep. And to this
product of milk must be added 16. 600
quarts of cream and 5000 quarts of con-
densed milk, representing $4,000 and
1880 quarts of ordinary milk, quite
enough to raise the pond and release
any OF the steamers that might happen
to have an unusually deep keel.
And then there is the process of gath
ering and marketing all this milk. A
half million acres or more of land are
required for the pasturage of the 1870, 900
cows, and besides that the hay on $50. 900
acres of meadow must be cut to supply
them during the months when they
cannot run in the lots. Then there is the
land that at. the same time must be de-
voted to raising grain for feed-some tens
of thousands of acres more. A farm of
eighty acres will keep scarcely ten COWS,
but, even at that rate, more than IS, 600
farms of eighty acres each are needed to
support these cows; more than million
acres of land is occupied. For every
eighty acre patch there is at least one
man with his wife, and during the har-
vest season he must employ help. 1t
takes a great army Of sturdy men and
women to look after the cattle.
To this army must be added the agents
of the wholesale dealers, who go scouting
up and down the thirteen railroads that
every night bring milk by the trainload
to the city. The scouts haunJ the high
ways near the railways and lie in wait
for the farmer and the farmers wife, es-
pecially the wife. They remind her of the
hard work she had to do when she made
butter Of the milk and how she would
have neither churning nor working of
butter, nor the setting of milk for the
cream to rise, nor the skimming of the
cream, nor the washing Of the pans, if
the milk should be sold to the New York
buyers. And the farm wife mods her
head in assent. To the farmer the scout
says that milk sold at cent and three
quarters cash in hand is a lot more profit.
able than cheese at eight cents pound
or butter at the wholesale prices, and,
any way, cheese sells for less than eight
more months than it brings eight and a
half. The farmer knows that is SO, but
if he has fine grade of cattle-pure
if he feeds them grain the
year round, with plenty of good pasture
in summer and plenty of hay with little
ensilage in winter, and if his cow stable
is SO clean that his neighbors would not
object to dancing quadrille there after
the daily scrubbing, the chances are that
the scout will start in with an offer OF
two cents and jump to two and hall
the moment the old farmer snorts at the
first offer, and thereafter may go up by
quarter-cent steps to three or more.
There is one great firm in New York that
buys the product of %, 900 COWS every day
ana pays three and half cents quart
for all it can get, but the COW owner has
to admit the firms inspectors whenever
they want to come to the stable, and the
stable has to be cleaner and sweeter than
some parlors if that company is to con-
tinue buying milk there. On the whole,