Connecticut western news., 1909-08-19
WHO GETS THE
 PROFIT 0N MILK?
ANSWERED BY THE N. Y. WORLD
Milk Trust Pays Two Cents for Milk and Gets From Twelve to Fifteen Cents-Too. Much Difference Be- tween Buying and Selling Prices.


 tween Buying and Selling Prices.
 Farmers within hundred miles of the City Hall, says the New York World, have been forced to sell milk this summer for less than 3 cents a quart, while the Milk Trusts keeps up it's high prices to the consumer. No milk is sold at retail in New York for less than 5 cents quart and very little at that price. The lowest cost of low-grade milk at the cheapest stores is 6 and cents quart. This is for "d1pped mllk'-that is, milk dipped from the can and not bottled. Bottled milk costs the consumer and 10 cents quart. If it is certified to be clean and with low bacterial con- tents it costs 12 or IA cents Special milk for babies cost as high as 20 and 25 cents quart.
 The Milk Trust works through the Milk Exchange. The Milk Exchange is not 8 place where buyers and sell CTS meet, like an ordinary market or stock exchange, but is an association of middIemen, who are neither the produc- CTS, nor the consumers, but fix the price that the producer shall receive and that the consumer shall pay.
 How low this price can be fixed is snown by sample milk check given to F. w. Dean of New Milford, Pa., by the Diamond Dairy Company. The gross price paid this producer was 67 cents a can for 40 quarts. From this price was deducted 10 cents can cart age, leaving him net 57 cents a can or 1-17-40 cents quart. .. z The amount of cream to quart of milk varies according to the breed ot the COW, Jerseys giving more than Hol- steins, Guernseys about the same as Jerseys, Ayrshires more than HoIstelns and grade COWS as rule less than registered thoroughbreds. On the aver age it would take eight to ten quarts of milk to make quarteof cream, skim ming deep or running the separator rather wide open to make as large @ quantity of cream as will pass. That would make the equivalent of New York's milk consumption, excluding butter and cheese. 16,853, ,O80 quarts of milk week.
 In fact, it is not this much milk, be- cause for great part of the cream the farmer gets nothing. The agricultural law prohibits the selling of milk with less than per cent butter fats. A grade Jersey COW will give 4 per cent milk and in some cases Az per cent. Thoroughbred Jerseys have been known to give as high as 6 per cent butter fats, Holsteins 311a to 4, and ordinary scrubs from 311a up.
 Although the law prohibits the skiaa- ming of milk before 1t is sold as whole milk there is no way to. detect the skimming of part of the cream proyid- ed that what remains tests higher than 3 per cent Some creameries buy noth- ing but milk and sell both milk and cream. The consumer pays the full price for the partly skinned milk and also the full retail price for the cream. The farmers are paved only for the milk and nothing additional for the cream which has been skinned off it.
 For this milk and cream the 4,000.- 900 consumers of New York pay more than $1 ,00O, 900 week. The thousands of producing farmers get about one quarter of what the consumer pays, or $2OO,OOO a week, averaging possibly $1O to $12 week to the small farmer, little more than the wages of all un- skilled laborer and allowing nothing for the capital invested, the feed, the skill and the risk.
 A good average cow will give 5000 quarts of milk year. It will eat ' to 10 pounds a day of grain in the shape of bran, oilmeal, ground oats and corn, besides 12 or 15 pounds of hay and that much more dry corn fodder or its equivalent in ensilage Bran now costs $1 50 a hundred, oilmeal $1.85 a hundred, corn $1.7O and oats $1 95, making an average of between 11a and 3 cents pound for the grain which the cows eats OF 12 to 15 cents 8 day. The hay and corn fodder are worth that much more.
 If a man were to buy his corn feed at market prices it would cost $9O a year. If he sold his milk at the price which MT. Dean receives he would get $43 8 year.
 If the farmer were a business man he would have stopped this long time ago. The reason he does not stop 1t IS because he is not 8 business man, and raising his food on the farm, he is able to work for nothing without starving to death.