The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1911-03-16
The CONFESSIONS OF A
M|LKMAN
A Subscriber Tells of Trials and Trib-
ulatiOns of the Business.


puts himself in the place of the one
making the confession and the emo
tions, whatever they may be that are
excited by the reading, love, hate
sorrow or Joy are in a way felt by the
reader for himself We are all that
selfish.
Why should not the confessions of a
milkman be as interesting as those
of other criminals? OF course, to be
real confession nothing should be
eft out and | will leave it to the
reader to judge how much or how lit
tie has been told in this one. How
many people know that milk is eighty
to eighty-nine per cent water and
that the water in milk cannot be dis
tinguished from any other water?
How many people know that the food
value of a quart of milk is more than
that of a pound of beefsteak? The
life of a milkman who raises his own
milk is more confined than that of
most people or of any other kind of
farmers. The days are long without
holidays or Sundays. Try as hard as
| may | cannot get through delivering
milk in time for church and | have
at the present time some new clothes,
which if they are seen at all, will
J l., H. nv a
show, town meeting or other informal
gathering.
The milkman's pung in times of
severe weather has to make the first
track in the snow and sometimes it is
the last one for the day. One good
honest lady customer whom no one
ever suspected of being a joker,
changed the place Of leaving her pint
of milk from the front door to the
back because as she gravely informed
me, Il want to keep a path to the
back door" She had her path Any
kind of stock farming is more contin-
ing than raising crops and | have
thought of quitting it and going into
potatoes. see that the Canadian
farmers are all against reciprocity
and if ii comes about we can profit
ably dump our potatoes into the Mon
treal and Quebec markets, which
they are afraid we will do. But to
confess: To show the differing ideas
of different milk customers. one of
my customers, during warm weather,
asked me to put something into the
milk to keep it from souring another
one. just the other day lin February
asked me not to do SO as she could
not sour her milk, it would turn
thick but would not sour and she had
been told by several people that
used something of that kind / once
had a pint customer who told the
man who was driving my milk wagon
| that if there was not more cream on
| the milk she would try some other
milk. He told her that she reminded
| him of a woman in another town who
took a pint of milk from his wagon
and quit because she said that after
making butter for the family of sew
en- there was no cream left for Cof-
fee. One of my customers quit be-
cause she said that my milk was
worse than she ever got from SIS,
another dealer The tone of voice
with which she made this assertion
would give one the idea that it must
necessarily be very bad. To those
people who would like to know how
a milkman can make butter, would
say, it is all in knowing how.
Bad milk is without doubt the
cause or one Of the causes of the
death of many infants and a corol-
larry to this proposition is that no
matter what ails the baby, if he is
fed on cows milk it is the milk that
does not agree with him. Therefore,
speaking as a layman, | would say
that it would be better for mothers
to nurse their babies The following
table represents the composition of
1000 parts Of milk:
Woman's Whitewater, $50; casein,
80; sugar AZ; fat %; salts, l.
Cows Whitewater, S64; casein,
50; sugar 80; fat SO; salts, 6.
Many years ago when ! first went
into the milk business and when you
could buy a comic valentine, | used
periodically to get in the mail, pic
ture of long nosed. lantern jawed
milkman pumping water into a can
and underneath would be some sour
rilous doggerel setting forth my disc
honesty and the extent to which | was
oyerworking my best COW. OF course,
| never could locate and punish the
perpetrator of this yillianous piece of
business, but he has no doubt long
since gone to his reward
Finally | will say to those political
economists, land spectators, cattle
raisers and others who think with
the immortal Nautilus that population
will outrun the means of subsls-
tence that before that time comes,
dairying will be a thing of the past