The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-23
FACTORS IN
 COST OF MILK.
Duplication of Effort in Delivery An
 Bottles Life About 22 Days

Milk wagon routes in large cities retrace and t<crisscross one another, adding to the cost of distribution: this dupIi cation of effort has a direct bearing on the retail price of milk, as it increases the expenses aof the milk dealers. On the other hand it is also a, tax upon the farmer, for it tends to keep down the price paid for milk on the farm. It must be understood, however, that much of the waste in milk delivery, under the present system, can not be entirely prevented, because there are so many 1 dealers in each locality and competi- ton is keen! According to the dairy 1 experts of the United States Depart | ment of Agriculture, efforts should be made, nevertheless, by the dealers to concentrate their business as much as possible so as to lessen the dis tance travelled by the wagon for each quart of milk delivered, by securing small. area. .s
 Data are now being prepared by the department on the distribution of milk in some of the large naties. In :! the District of Columbia. 98t routes \ were measured The shortest dis l 10.4 miles, and the longest was 30, showing a considerable variation. | The average distance for the 9S wagons was 19.1 miles. When these 1 measurements were made there were approximately 51o miles of streets in the district and 250 wagons were making the retail deliveries of milk. I F1 guring that each of these wagons 1 travelled 19.1 miles, they all covered 4,775 miles each day, or 9.3 times the sum of all the streets in the dis l trict. Thus the time of about of every wagons was used uneconornic- ally. More than 80 dealers were making the deliveries
 The present trend in retail business ] seems to be toward the small pack Iage- A few years ago many kinds of 1 food were sold in bulk which, at present are purchased, to a large ex- | tent, in small packages The same trend is noticeable in the retail milk | business, there being a greater de- 1nand for pint bottles than for quart l in the five large cities recently studied by the departme Boston, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and, Baltimore. Seventy dealers in these cities handled daily about
 26o,oOO quart bottles and 361, 900 pint | bottles. About Al per cent of the total bottled milk of these dealers 1 is handled in pints.
 It takes consi derab1y longer to wash and fill two pint bottles than one quart; moreover, it costs nearly as 1 quart bottle of milk One dealer, who 1 handles quarts only, says it would 1 take the profit from one quart of l milk to make up for the loss of one pint yet, as the figures show, there is a surprisingly large number of ] pints handled by some dealers.
 Where Do the Bottles Go?
 The loss of bottles is a, perpIexing problem to all dealers and, in the aggregate, the total amount of money lost reaches great proportions in a year. The life of a, pint bottle is much shorter than that of a quart
 which is computed to last from 6 to 1 50 trips, the average being 22.5 trips. If the dealer delivers 10, 900 bottles daily, and they cost him 1-2 cents each, his daily expense for replacing l bottles would be $15.55, or $5,675.75 1 a year. It is necessary to use small 1 bottles for some kinds of trade, as, for instance, the hotel or restaurant trade, where the guests are served l milk in the bottle, but the cost of delivery and the loss of bottles in con nection with this trade is usually | small. In some sections of the cities, 1 customers often feel unable to buy
 more than a pint of milk at a time; l this has a tendency to cut down the 1 consumption of milk. Other families are so small that they do not require more than a pint
 If a pint sells for more than half the price of a quart, as is often, the
 case, then buying by the pint is the l more expensive method for the con suner, as he pays the extra cost of | delivery. If there is no difference in price, then the extra cost of delivery comes out of the profits of the dealer. The small, local community stores
 often handle large quantities of milk, and here, too, the greatest demand is for pint bottles.
 On account of the convenient size there is also more temptation for the
 costumers to appropriate a pint bot l tie instead of the quart for the pre- serving of vegetables and fruits, and for other purposes. Although in most places this is contrary to law, yet it is often done without any feel ing of guilt on the part of the house. wife. Not all bottles, however, are lost or broken, large numbers being simply nnislaid- Some get into the