The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-08-12
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supplying cities with milk and in meeting the grow
ing demands of such centers with pure milk. Chi
cago alone consumes 1000, 0O0, 900 quarts of milk
annually, while thousands of cans of condensed
milk and pasteuriZed milk are used for breakfast.
Milk is shipped from farms as far as 300 miles
away, reaching the city in time for breakfast the
next morning. Because of the immense demand
for milk, the necessity of having it of the highest
quality and the need for an economical method
of collection and distribution, great milk COM
panies were formed several years ago, which
erected milk-collecting stations in Illinois and ad-
Joining states, along the railroads, where milk is
received for shipment. The milk thus received
direct from the farmers is handled in the best pos
sible manner, shipped in 40-quart cans. by the car
load. The milk train" is one of the common
phases of all railroads connecting with a large
American city today.
The task of supplying great cities with milk has
become u highly specialized industry. The process
of gathering, transporting and distributing the
fresh milk supply of a large city is one of the
complex tasks confronting those who provide the
country's daily food. The entire milk production
of the country must be cared for every day. Fresh
milk is the only product that must quickly come to
the consumer. 1t cannot be stored when there Is
a food of 1t and carried over until there Is a short
age, although modern refrigeration has served to
solve a part of this problem. Today's supply must
meet tomorrow's demand.
When one realizes that the city of Chicago must
have 5,000.000 pounds of milk daily, 1t Is easily
understood that prompt conversion Of this product
into money is no small task. The changes In the
geographic distribution Of the population of the
United States, in the centers of agricultural pro-
duction, and in the methods of transportation have
had a marked influence on the localization of the
dairy industry. In early days the dairy farmer
supplied demands within a restricted area, but the
development of railroads and refrigeration has
had considerable effect on the character of the in
dustry in Its Capitalization.
Milk has been a food and dfink for young and
old ever since prehistoric times, and the reason
for this is that milk is one of the most desirable of
human foods. 1t remained for modern analytical
processes to prove that milk is the cheapest and
most valuable of food products, especially when
compared with meat. The department of agricul-
ture has discovered that for 25 cents worth of a
given product, milk is a more valuable food than
meat.
The grim words employed by the South Carolina
board of health. "a fly In the milk may mean a
baby in the grave" have gone over the land and
left their impression upon the minds of farmers
and milk consumers. Files bear germs, and u sin
gle germ In a milk bottle breeds a deadly million
In a few hours. Too often during the last 90
years we have read Of epldemlcs of typhoid and
similar diseases being traced directly to a contain
mated milk supply.
OF all human foods, possibly none is more sue
ceptible to contamination than milk, particularly
in hot weather when in the months of June, July
and August, the babies of the country die by the
thousands. Diseases of the digestive organs cause
40 per cent of the deaths in many cities. Cows
milk is the exclusive food for a great majority of
the American children up to the time they are one
year old, and it is the chief food of practically all
children from the age of one to five. The white
ness and opaqueness of milk serve as a covering
and shelter for insoluble substances.
The theory that clean milk possesses long-keep-
ing qualities has been found true with certified
milk. Instances are on record where certified milk
has been taken on an ocean voyage and not only
brought back in good condition, but also kept sweet
until 80 days old. When your milk is sour after
a few hours, 1t is certain that 1t is not clean milk.
A number of certified milk dairies in the United
States sent exhlbits,o of milk to the Paris exhibition
in 1900. and the milk kept sweet for two weeks,